These are the Voyages
by hiyoris-scarf
Summary: Star Trek AU. Winry Rockbell: an engineering prodigy, fresh out of Starfleet Academy and ready to make a name for herself-just don't get in her way. Edward Elric: boy genius, darling of the Federation, youngest-ever science officer, and "Grade A" Pain in the Ass. When the universe starts falling apart around them, they'll both have to grow stronger than they ever thought possible.
1. Prologue: Prejudgments

_Dear Granny,_

 _I almost can't believe it. I've been assigned, and it's too good to be true. I'm going to be an engineer on the_ USS Amestris _! Granny, it's a_ galaxy-class _ship, and one of the most powerful explorer vessels in the_ entire _fleet! The warp technology on the_ Amestris _is absolutely state of the art—I can't wait to get to know it better. I could write about it for ten more paragraphs, but I know you don't want to strain your eyes. I'll tell you all about the mechanics of it later—don't you worry!_

 _I jumped up and down and nearly strangled Paninya when I found out I'd been assigned. She was_ jealous _. She hasn't gotten her assignment yet, but I think it's wishful thinking to hope we'll both be assigned to the same ship_. _I thought she might take me out with one of those leg cannons of hers (I really wish you could see her droids, Granny—they're way more over-the-top than anything you'd ever make, but I think you'd find them interesting)._

 _I can't believe how quickly it's all gone by—all my time at the Academy has just been training wheels for the real thing. I'm finally going to explore the quadrant, and I just can't believe that I get to put my hands on—well, around, at least, because warp plasma would vaporize my bones—that_ magnificent _warp core! In just one week, I go aboard. The time is going to pass so slowly…_

 _But Paninya is taking me out tonight to celebrate, and hopefully I can cheer her up too. She's worried she'll be assigned to some "boring" science vessel analyzing a particularly uninteresting class 2 nebula. In fact, she's glaring daggers at me right now because I'm taking too long to finish writing. I'd better not get on her bad side at this point._

 _I love you, and I'll talk to you again soon!_

 _Winry_

* * *

"I researched your ship for you while you were taking _so long_ to finish writing," said Paninya, reaching for a handful of peanuts.

"But I already researched it! I found out all about the warp technology it implements—they've got these new antimatter containers that really maximize—"

"No, you big nerd, I mean the _people_ on the ship."

"Oh." Winry cocked an eyebrow at her smirking friend. "Well—I would have gotten there eventually too. I _did_ find out who the chief engineer is."

"Who cares! Do you even know the name of the captain?" Paninya tossed a peanut in her mouth and swished her glass around. The two were sitting in one of the favorite recreational haunts of the Academy youth—a restaurant and bar that, despite its popularity, always had a quiet corner to facilitate conversation.

"I know I saw it somewhere…" Winry's eyebrows creased in concentration.

Paninya saved her the trouble. "Roy Mustang, war hero and ladies man. I heard he tried to put through an initiative to get those dumb miniskirts back on the mandatory list for the female uniform, but it got shot down. How sad."

Winry wrinkled her nose in distaste. "He _can't_ be worse than the professors always told us Kirk was. The man's skirt-chasing made it into the history books."

"I don't know. I guess Captain Mustang has more than a few notches in his belt. And not all of them are human, from what I gather."

"Paninya, where do you even hear this stuff?!" Winry sipped her drink and chuckled.

"I guess I should try to stay in engineering and away from the bridge. I'm not in the mood to have my ass grabbed by someone who's probably slept with a Klingon."

"Good luck to you." Paninya raised her glass. "Maybe his second in command keeps him in check. She's part Vulcan, and _deadly_."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, she's kind of a legend. I heard she took out a Romulan warship with _one_ photon torpedo when she was chief tactical officer on the _USS Central Pride_ a few years ago."

"Paninya, I'm starting to seriously question your research methods—"

"Oh, but wait, get this—her name's Hawkeye. Seriously, it's her family name, not even a nickname."

Winry looked at her friend, feeling skeptical, yet impressed. These people had already built reputations for themselves—enough for Paninya to have overheard plenty about them in bar gossip—and here she was, Winry Rockbell, getting ready to join their ranks. She wondered who would be telling stories about her in five years, about how many Romulan warships she'd taken out with her…wrench?

She returned to her friend's hyperbolic descriptions with a question. "Just how… _Vulcan_ …is she?"

"Only a quarter. And that's just as well, in my opinion. Bunch'a pointy-eared misanthropes…"

Paninya devolved into grumbling, while Winry grinned into her drink. Her friend's enthusiastic personality had clashed violently and frequently with those of the Vulcan students at the Academy.

"Anyone else of interest?" asked Winry, once she thought Paninya had nearly complained herself out.

"Hmm…you already know about the chief engineer. Lieutenant Commander Dominic LeCoulte, or the 'Dilithium Demon,' as he seems to be known in general company."

Paninya grimaced, and Winry laughed.

"He's scared off countless ensigns, so you're in for a challenge, Win."

Winry smirked confidently. "I grew up the granddaughter of Pinako Rockbell. I'd love to see him intimidate me."

Paninya laughed, then suddenly cried out and snapped her fingers. "Oh! And how could I forget the child prodigies!"

"Child prodigies?" Winry didn't actually believe there were children serving aboard the _Amestris_.

"Well, not really _child_ prodigies. But these two are a bit infamous. They never went to Starfleet Academy, and it sounds like they've lived in starships ever since they were born."

" _How_ in the world did they get away with skipping the Academy?!"

Winry nearly knocked over the bowl of peanuts. This couldn't be true—it was just more of Paninya's exaggerated storytelling. It was too unfair: a couple brats who just _happened_ to have grown up in space instead of on a planet (freaks!), being allowed to skip all their formal training, while she, whose life dream it had always been to be chief engineer, had to slave away in her classes!

Paninya shrugged.

"Oh, so this one you _don't_ know, mistress of gossip?"

"Hey, I'm not omniscient. Anyway, I forget their names, but they're both super-scientists. The older one's already a lieutenant and he's just about the age to graduate from the Academy by now if he had actually gone here."

Winry's knuckles ached as she gripped the stem of her glass. This was _not_ acceptable. She had pushed herself to the edge of sanity, stayed up all night for weeks before exams, harangued her professors and tutors, run herself ragged until the very _day_ before graduation, all so that she could be the _best_ officer. And her competition included some petted "genius" boy who already outranked her? She briefly contemplated a transfer request—then the thought of the _Amestris'_ warp drive immediately drove the idea from her mind.

She saw Paninya giving her a funny look as the glass complained under her iron grip.

"Winry. Don't freak. Do you want me to tell you that you're literally an engineering goddess? Because I will! And you are! Just ignore these guys—they're in an entirely different division of ship's functions. You'll probably never see the lieutenant anyway, because he's always on the bridge—science officer, I guess."

Winry sighed, loosening her death grip.

"I guess I just feel like I'm still under so much pressure, even after graduation. I was _already_ competitive, and the Academy certainly didn't do anything to change that. And now a midget outranks me. Perfect."

Paninya giggled. "You have _no_ idea how tall he is."

Winry narrowed her eyes. "I just have a feeling."


	2. Launch

Winry was certain her stomach dropped five decks when she first stepped onto the Galaxy-class _USS Amestris (_ NCC-74888). Her stomach had been rolling sickeningly during the entire shuttle journey to the dock, and the frenetic buzz of energy surrounding the ship's launch did nothing to calm her uncharacteristically frayed nerves.

Her first impression upon boarding was that there was lots of white. White walls, white floors, white doors. White noise on every side—the hum of crewmen preparing the ship to exit the dock. She was helpfully guided to engineering after tapping on a control panel to request directions from the computer, and found her way to the turbolift in a sort of daze.

She was vaguely aware that she shared the lift with some other people, but was too lost in the sensations of anxiety-induced nausea and excitement-induced trembling to make any introductions. That is, until someone else in the lift tapped her vigorously on the shoulder.

"Hey! Earth to Ensign Anonymous! What's your name?"

Winry whipped her head around and came face to face with a dark-haired girl close to her own age.

"Oh! I-I'm Winry. Or, Ensign Rockbell, I guess."

"Winry…that's a _cute_ name! Mine's Rebecca. Pretty boring, but I can handle it."

The girl grinned and grabbed Winry's hand, pumping it up and down.

"So nice to meet you! Where are you headed?"

"Engineering."

Rebecca's eyes got as big as saucers and her mouth fell open.

"An engineer?! You're all so _smart!_ Fuery's assigned to engineering too, you should talk to him about it."

She gestured to a short, bespectacled young man standing in a corner of the lift, who waved bashfully at Winry and introduced himself.

"Ensign Kain Fuery here. I go by the last name, though. Makes me sound tough and angry."

Rebecca giggled.

"He's already dazzled my brain with his engineering knowledge. Put me in charge of an antimatter container and start praying, because you're probably about to meet whatever god you believe in!"

"What's your specialty, since it's obviously not engineering?" Winry asked curiously.

"Weapons!" Rebecca practically shrieked. "I just _love_ phasers! My last boyfriend thought it was creepy—I dumped him—but I adore all kinds of guns. I'm on one of the security details."

Winry laughed heartily. She liked this bizarre, bubbly, terrifying girl. Something about her reminded Winry distinctly of Paninya.

Then the doors opened.

"Good luck you two!" Rebecca chirped as she pushed Winry and Fuery into the pristine hallway, then stepped back into the otherwise empty lift.

The two glanced at each other bemusedly, then both shrugged and started walking down the hall in the direction of engineering.

"Did you just meet her too?" Winry inquired, pointing backwards with her thumb to show that she meant Rebecca.

"Kind of," Fuery admitted. "We were on the same shuttle for about twenty minutes today. I heard her life story. And somehow, she found out most of mine."

Winry laughed out loud. "She seems like a hard person not to talk to."

Fuery grimaced.

"I had a feeling she might shoot me if I didn't talk to her. So I took the less life-threatening option."

"She's right, you really _are_ smart!"

The two kept up the small talk until they came in sight of the doors to ship's engineering. Winry found out that Fuery was a new graduate, just like her, and had a fascination with building his own shuttlecraft.

"I really hope I have the opportunity to check out the shuttles they've got onboard," he admitted dreamily as the two waited for the doorway to hiss open. "They're supposed to be…well…frankly, awesome. I can't describe them in just thirty seconds, so I'll spare you."

He smiled sheepishly.

"I understand your fascination," Winry told him. "I can't believe I'm about to see the most advanced warp technology right in front of my eyes!"

The two stepped through into engineering, and were almost bowled over by a swarm of crewmen who scurried past carrying what looked like hundreds of blue gel packs. Winry recognized them as the main component of the bioneural technology that made the _Amestris_ one of the most advanced exploring vessels of its time. She drew in a sharp breath, looking to her companion to point out her findings, before realizing that he had already been swept into the heart of the enormous, balconied room by a frazzled junior lieutenant who needed help getting the impulse drive online. She glanced around briefly to look for an authority figure whom she could officially report to, but she was immediately distracted. There _it_ was.

A glorious, incomparable, two-story-tall masterpiece thrumming with inconceivable power. It was right in front of her, pulsing gently as engineers swarmed around it, checking last minute dilithium measurements and altering the antimatter containment field to the precise decimal point. Winry meant to search for the chief engineer and report to him, she really did, but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. She rested her hands on the railing and just watched the plasma play within the glass walls of the pillar, creating vaporous, luminescent swirls that reflected off the shining surfaces of the ship.

 _"You."_

Oh. Her moment was over.

Winry turned, very slowly, and looked into the face of the person who addressed her. The face in question was very high off the ground. Lieutenant Commander Dominic LeCoulte could fill up an entire turbolift, and his features were craggy, beaten, and currently twisted in a prodigious scowl.

 _I will not be intimidated. I will not be scared. I will not be absolutely livid with fright._

"Ensign, did you intend to report for duty before or after the _Amestris_ reached the outer limits of the quadrant?"

Winry responded with every ounce of courage in her body.

"B-b-b-before, sir."

She was stuttering. Winry wanted to jump into the core and let it melt her before LeCoulte did so with his eyes.

"Then I suggest you tell me your name, so I can assign you to scrubbing plasma injectors for the next few months. I can assure you, such a tedious and consuming job leaves no time for daydreaming."

Winry nodded breathlessly.

" _NAME, ENSIGN."_

 _"_ Rockbell, sir! Winry Rockbell!"

LeCoulte brought his eyes up from what he was typing on his notepad, even though his fingers still moved quickly.

"Rockbell…are you related to Pinako Rockbell?"

"Yes! She's my grandmother!" Winry exclaimed eagerly. _He must know how talented she is. And now he knows I'm her granddaughter._

LeCoulte nodded once, glancing briefly at the entry in his notes, then pinned her again with his scowl and a cold stare. "Get to the injector array, ensign. They'll tell you what to do. And tell your grandmother I still hate the ground she walks on."

Winry's jaw dropped as the "Dilithium Demon" stalked away to terrify another bewildered crewman. Once she realized she'd probably be cut from the ship's crew immediately if LeCoulte saw her standing slack-jawed, she shot into overdrive and darted for the plasma injector array.

 _My first day on the job, and I'm on janitor duty. And, incidentally, the chief engineer hates my family. Wonderful!_

The harried engineer in charge of the injector alignment heralded Winry's arrival with joy.

"Excellent! I know just how to put you to work, ensign. Here, take this cloth…"

Winry thought her sigh must have echoed through both levels of engineering.

* * *

Her first day had been exhausting, and the ship hadn't even left the dock yet. It had been nothing for her but hours of scrubbing grime off the plasma injectors, a quick detour to the crew quarters during her 20-minute break to check on her belongings, and finally, after _still more_ scrubbing, Winry was released from her shift to await the launch. Fuery grabbed her arm as soon as her supervisor/captor let her walk away, and informed her firmly that they were visiting the mess hall.

"Ow," was all that Winry could respond. Her fingers ached from the elbow grease she'd had to give the last stubborn streak.

"Not a great first day?" he chuckled.

"Well, the big man hates me and my entire family, apparently, which is _very_ encouraging."

Winry's shoulders slumped as she walked along.

"Don't feel too special about that—I think he might hate everyone."

"I didn't witness him verbally dissecting you today."

"Oh, I'm sure my time will come. But meanwhile, you need to eat. You'll feel better about the 'Curse of the Dilithium Demon' once you get some good replicated nutrients in you."

Winry gave Fuery a grateful smile. _What a nice guy. Too bad he's shorter than me._

The mess hall wasn't crowded, but there were quite a few new crew members dotted around the room, getting acquainted with each other and fiddling with the intricate replicators. One table near the back of the hall was almost full, but Winry saw a familiar face among the gaggle. Near the center of the group, Rebecca spotted the two engineers as they walked in, and waved them over to her table full of people Winry guessed must be more security personnel.

"I knew we were all going to be friends!" Rebecca enthused as she pulled Winry down to sit next to her. "You have to meet everyone on my detail! This is Maria Ross—" indicating a sweet-faced, short-haired girl sitting across from Winry, "—Denny Brosh—" a male ensign with long bangs, who seemed to be sticking close to Maria's side, "—Jean Havoc—" a smirking blond boy sitting on Rebecca's other side, who was occupied in chewing a toothpick, "—and Heymens Breda." The heavyset redhead at the end of the table mumbled a greeting around his gigantic sandwich.

"Everyone, these are the genius engineers, Fuery and Winry. Play nice and don't point your phasers at them." Rebecca finished her introductions and set to work on her food with as much energy as she had talked.

Winry smiled nervously around at the group of people, who were now all staring at her curiously. She almost didn't remember why she had walked into the mess hall in the first place until her stomach loudly gurgled. The girl Rebecca had introduced as Maria Ross immediately sized her up, looking concerned.

"Have you eaten since you came on board?"

"No," Winry admitted with guilt.

"I'm going to get you something from the replicator. Want anything in particular?"

"Oh, you don't have to—"

"Nonsense! We already heard how the engineers are all run ragged—all _we_ had to do today was report to the head of our detail and do a preliminary deck sweep. We've been off duty most of the day. Let me get you something. What would you like?"

"Oh, um. I don't think it matters—anything will be great. Thank you so much!"

Maria nodded with a smile, and headed toward the nearest replicator. She came back with a tray of hot soup, bread and cheese, and a cup of tea.

"Oh, _perfect_." The scent of the soup made Winry think she might actually start drooling. "I did not know replicated food could look this great."

She blew on a spoonful and sipped it. "Or _taste_ this great."

"This sandwich isn't as good as the ones I get from home," Breda complained. "But it's sure better than the ones at Starfleet Academy's cafeteria."

Everyone around the table laughed, and the conversation, which had briefly been interrupted by the arrival of Winry and Fuery, started anew. Winry listened quietly at first, eating what was on her tray as she learned more about her new acquaintances. Rebecca was already flirting hugely with the guy named Jean Havoc—luckily those two had the same interest in weaponry. Oddly enough, Denny Brosh and Fuery struck up a lively conversation about Parrises squares while Maria and Winry exchanged amused glances.

 _Who would have pegged those two as sports buffs?_ Winry asked herself briefly, contemplating the two slender ensigns attempting to survive the violently competitive game.

Breda seemed content to spend quality time alone with his sandwich, which left Winry and Maria to make conversation. Winry found the other girl to be pleasant and friendly, though quiet at first. She took a moment to appreciate her extraordinary good luck: that she had already fallen in with a nice group of people on her first day aboard. At the very least, having a supportive group of friends would make her trials in engineering bearable.

After what seemed like too short a time, the lights suddenly dimmed in the mess hall, and yellow beacons began flashing intermittently. An electronic noise echoed throughout the ship, and everyone fell silent to listen to the impending announcement.

A deep, male voice suddenly boomed throughout the mess hall. "This is your captain speaking. The _Amestris_ is now ready for launch. Crew members, return to your stations until we engage warp drive. We will remain in yellow alert status until the ship is fully underway." The voice paused briefly before concluding its message. "Oh, and…welcome aboard."

"That's our cue!" Rebecca jumped up, pulling Havoc along with her.

The group left the mess hall and joined the exodus of crew members rushing in every direction—all part of the orderly madness of ship's launch. Once on the engineering deck, Fuery and Winry jogged along the hallway, hurried along by the impatient yellow alert alarm. Engineering was chaotic, and Winry nimbly avoided the center of the storm by sidestepping along the walls until she reached the monitors for the injector array. She heard LeCoulte barking orders all the way on the other side of the room, then turned around and saw him tap his comm badge and speak into it.

Five seconds later, Winry felt the jolt of the thrusters engaging, then utter stillness as the ship was gently guided out of the dock. The only sign that the _Amestris_ was moving at all was the proof on the monitor that the engines were active.

" _IMPULSE STATUS!_ " roared LeCoulte suddenly, and a lieutenant shouted back, "Full capacity, sir!" The chief engineer tapped his comm again. Winry assumed he must be speaking to the captain to tell him the ship was ready to engage impulse drive. They were fully outside the docking area, waiting to go to warp at any second.

" _WARP CAPACITY! INERTIAL DAMPENERS! ANTIMATTER CONTAINMENT!"_

"All optimal, sir!"

Winry heard the drive engage, and whirled around to watch the plasma burn, hotter and bluer than a welding flame, as it whipped itself into a frenzy inside the thick walls. _Beautiful._

She looked back down at the computer screen and saw they were now seamlessly cruising at warp factor 5. She had already ventured farther from planet Earth than most people ever dreamed of traveling, but Winry wasn't feeling upset or homesick. She was an adventurer, a pioneer…an explorer. And not even Lieutenant Commander LeCoulte could take that accomplishment away from her.


	3. Space Rocks

That bastard was already giving him busy work.

Lieutenant Edward Elric, Starfleet's prized boy genius and the youngest ever chief science officer of a starship, did _not_ need to be relegated to such a menial task as _writing reports_. And, what's worse, his rightful station was now being manned by none other than that Betazoid imbecile, Ling.

"Mustang…" he growled as he stalked toward his quarters. He'd persuade Alphonse to finish the stupid reports, then meet with Mustang and give him a very large, very profane piece of his mind.

The door to his quarters hissed open, and Ed walked in, huffing as he collapsed supine onto his bed.

"Al? You in here?"

His brother walked out of the bathroom, uniform immaculate as always, with a look of gentle disapproval on his face.

"I just got a comm from the captain letting me know you'd be coming in here to bribe me to do your reports. Honestly, it's uncanny how he always knows…"

"It's not _him,_ " Ed snarled at the ceiling. "It's always the commander who's standing behind him, making him look smarter than he actually is. That idiot Mustang has the perception of a Klingon."

"Brother!"

"So this means you won't do my reports?"

"No, I have to head to sickbay in a few minutes. I told M—I told the doctor I'd help him organize the new hyposprays once I got off duty."

Ed made retching noises.

"Right. The doctor."

The only thing worse than having to work directly with Ling Yao was knowing that his own brother and Ling's younger sister, May, were hilariously failing to keep their flirtation a secret from the rest of the crew. Ed was very suspicious that the girl's telepathy gave her the ability to make Alphonse cater to her every whim. He had already said as much to his brother, whose response had been less than appreciative. Ed just couldn't understand what Al found so fascinating about the tiny field medic.

He watched his brother face the mirror to meticulously adjust his collar, then run a hand over his short golden hair to smooth it down.

"Ugh, stop _preening_ and just go. I'll write the damn reports…"

Al grinned wickedly back at him as he gave his hair one last pat. "I'll make you a deal, Ed. If you ever get a date, I'll do your work for you again."

Ed lifted his head to bestow a glare. "You sound like you're joking, but that better be a serious offer."

"Dead serious!" Alphonse waved nonchalantly as the door slid closed behind him.

 _That jerk thinks I can't get a date!_ Ed realized, as his brother's amused tone registered with him. He flopped off his bed and wandered over to the table where his computer was. He opened up a new dictation file, then stared at the blank screen for several silent minutes as the computer waited for him to start talking. Slamming the screen down again, he gave up on making sense of the reports Mustang had assigned him. _He can do them himself if they're so damn important._

Ed walked over to the replicator and was about to say "coffee, no milk," when his comm badge chirped and he heard Mustang's voice.

" _Lieutenant Elric, report to the bridge."_

"Are you kidding? I _just_ got off duty!"

" _No questions, lieutenant. You're needed at the science officer's station."_

Ed slammed his fist against the replicator's display screen as the comm connection ended.

"Can I never get a break?"

* * *

Five minutes later, Ed was kicking a smug Ling out of his post at the science station on the bridge.

"They really work you to the bone here, don't they?" Ling mockingly whispered as he resigned his post.

"I wouldn't have had to come up here in the first place if you knew how to do your job."

"Are you two going to follow orders or not?" Commander Hawkeye approached the bickering lieutenants with a warning gleam in her eyes.

Ling turned sharply to face the commander, and bowed briefly from the waist. "Just leaving, sir. I was going to update Lieutenant Elric, but I'll leave that job to someone more qualified." He then walked past Edward with an ingratiating smile still on his face.

 _Kiss ass!_

Ed aimed his silent expletive at the back of Ling's head and saw the telepathic lieutenant's shoulders start shaking with laughter. Turning back to the ship's second in command, Ed noted that she looked supremely un-amused.

Commander Riza Hawkeye, to the unschooled viewer, didn't immediately look like the Federation's most dangerous sharpshooter. With a gentle, yet dignified demeanor, she seemed to be the epitome of a proper officer, and her behavior to Captain Mustang was that of a loyal subordinate. However, any crewman with half a brain could figure out that the two were a team in command. And it was easy to see why Mustang relied so heavily on her. True to her given name, the commander had the sharp vision of a bird of prey, and Ed always felt a little uneasy when her focused gaze was trained on him.

"Why was I called back to the bridge, commander? We've only been underway for 36 hours—have we already found something strange?"

"Take a look for yourself." She gestured to the science station monitor screen. Ed stared at it, and at first couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, just the usual readout. Then he looked again.

"What…the hell?"

"Aptly noted, lieutenant."

Captain Mustang, his usual smirk replaced with a serious expression, removed himself from the captain's chair and walked across the bridge to look at the readout over Ed's shoulder.

"Any ideas?"

Ed stayed silent, trying to figure out what the readings meant, and whether or not he should start feeling as tense as Mustang and Hawkeye sounded. The short-range sensor readout indicated that the ship was rapidly approaching a debris field, the distribution pattern of which would normally suggest a destroyed asteroid. However, there were two very strange things about this particular debris field. The first red flag was the size of the field: the entire thing was only about a couple square meters large. The object that had been blown apart would only have been about the size of a fingernail. Normally a debris field of this size would be just a blip on the _Amestris'_ sensors, but there was something else about it that Ed found even more interesting.

The particulates in the debris field were composed of several elements that the computer was unable to classify. There were some standard components, but mostly the short-range sensors were simply at a loss to identify the material of the debris. This discovery would call for a more hands-on approach.

Ed grinned. A good challenge was just the right excuse for unfinished paperwork.

"Sir, permission to beam a sample of this material into the lab when we're within transporter range of the debris field."

Mustang was silent. Surprised, Ed tore his gaze away from the sensor readout to notice the captain and Hawkeye having a meaningful exchange purely through eye contact.

Ed was a little annoyed—they could at least let him investigate further if they were just going to keep calling him up when he was off duty. "Is there something I should know? Or did I just get summoned here to look at some sensor readings? Because Ling could have done that just fine, I might add."

Mustang and Hawkeye finished whatever silent communication they were excluding him from. Only after the commander gave a barely perceptible nod did Mustang give Ed his full attention.

"I'll give you leave to study the particulates, Elric. However, there are a few conditions."

Ed sighed. Mustang the micromanager, as usual.

"The first is that Lieutenant Commander Hughes be present when the sample is beamed aboard. The second is that the sample must be contained within a level five force field until it has undergone comprehensive scanning. You can study it from outside the force field until all safety precautions have been met. Understood, lieutenant?"

Ed was too confused to argue. True, it was odd—very odd—to encounter never-before-seen elements like these in a common debris field, but it seemed over-cautious to place such stringent security measures around a routine science operation.

Mustang and Hawkeye were still waiting for his response.

Ed shrugged. "I guess. But it seems like a lot of work to go to for just a few little pieces of space rock."

"Can't be too cautious!" Mustang saluted with far too much enthusiasm, and walked back over to his seat at the center of the bridge.

"Make sure the force field is ready in the lab, Elric. We'll be within transporter range in about fifteen minutes."

* * *

Ed waited for Mustang's go-ahead in the science lab, along with the head of security, Lieutenant Commander Maes Hughes. At this point, Ed was seriously considering beaming either himself or the lieutenant commander into the cold vacuum of space, because…

"My little Elicia! Isn't she just the sweetest, most darling thing you've ever seen?"

Ed blinked, and snatched the PADD away from Hughes, who was very close to pressing the device right up against the science officer's nose. Despite his formidable title of security chief, Hughes was currently doing his best to overwhelm everyone onboard with pictures of his three-year-old daughter. If they seemed too interested, they were bombarded with enough family photos to fill an entire ship's processor. Ed, unfortunately, had already expressed too much interest, and was the current favorite target of the lieutenant commander's cuteness attacks.

"Yes she is, sir." He said in a monotone.

Hughes' gushing was not to be thwarted. "She just had her birthday and I swear she's even cuter at three than she was at two! Look, here she is with all her presents—"

He was cut off by Mustang's voice, which emanated from Ed's comm badge.

 _"Bridge to the science lab."_

Ed, relieved beyond measure, answered him at once.

"Everything's ready, sir."

Hughes shoved his face into Ed's chest and shouted into the badge: "Roy, do you think you could maybe not interrupt when I'm telling Lieutenant Elric all about how perfect my family is? Frankly, it's inconsiderate!"

Silence deadened the other end of the line.

 _"I'll try and avoid doing so next time, Hughes."_

Ed could almost hear the captain rolling his eyes.

 _"So the force field is in place?"_

Ed shoved Hughes away from his comm badge and answered, "Yes."

 _"Then the transport is a go."_

Ed and Hughes both looked at the small containment field they had been testing for the last few minutes. The level five force field was in place, and holding steady. After a few seconds, something materialized on the floor of the container—as Ed had predicted, a few unobtrusive specks of mystery space rock.

 _"Do you have the sample?"_

"Yes…but it's tiny! Can I get a bit more to work with here?"

 _"Sorry lieutenant. That's all we agreed on."_

"No, wait, I'm sure we—"

And Mustang cut the connection.

"Is he being serious?" Ed stared at the microscopic pebbles in dismay. "If I try to test any of these, they might disintegrate!"

"I'm sure the captain has a good reason," said Hughes nonchalantly. "And it seems like you're all set here. If there's nothing else I'm needed for, I need to get to the mess hall and show everyone on my detail the newest pictures of Elicia. They just can't get enough of her!"

Ed's answer was immediate: "Nope, everything's fine here!"

"Well then, good luck Lieutenant Elric! Don't destroy those samples!"

And Hughes whisked himself away to the mess hall to torment his subordinates to his heart's content.

Ed exhaled in relief, then crouched down a little in front of the container holding a sample of the unidentifiable particulates.

 _You're not going to keep any secrets from me, you little space rocks. I'm going to find out what you are and where you came from._

* * *

Maybe the little space rocks _were_ going to keep some secrets from him after all.

Ed started with a few routine tests, trying to determine if the sensors had simply misread the makeup of the debris. He prided himself on being thorough, if nothing else. However, after the tests were finished, there was no doubting it—these particulates contained elements that had never been logged in any previous explorations of the Alpha Quadrant.

Ed snickered. _Yes, I_ finally _get to name an element after myself!_

The next thing to do was determine the characteristics of the particulates, so he could add his findings to the ship's records and recognize these elements if they ever cropped up again. And this was where his work hit a snag.

The rocks were utterly nonreactive. Ed started with smaller tests that wouldn't destroy the samples, then graduated to greater forces that would have tested the durability of most minerals. Finally, he got so frustrated that he blasted the particulates with high levels of gamma radiation. Even if they blew apart and he lost the sample, at least they would have shown _some_ form of reaction.

"You are, without a doubt, the most boring space rocks I have ever seen."

Ed didn't usually talk to his test subjects, but he felt like the particulates were mocking him.

At least this report would be easy to write: "Mystery particulates were brought aboard for further study. Upon further examination, mystery particulates were discovered to be fully useless."

At a loss, Ed glanced at the lab station panel for inspiration, and was surprised to find out that he had been trying to make the debris react for well over four hours—and his next shift on the bridge began in less than ten minutes.

"Crap!" He was starving, and really quite sweaty from his exertions over the strange rocks. If he started running now, he could make it to the mess hall and wolf down something without being too late to the bridge.

Throwing himself out the door, Ed collided forcefully with a crew member who was carrying a large toolkit under one arm. His annoyance at nearly being late for his shift, on top of not having eaten anything the whole day, didn't prompt him to turn around and apologize. He heard the clatter of the toolkit bursting open on the floor, and shouted a hurried "Sorry!" over his shoulder as he took off running down the long hallway.

* * *

"Aaaaahhhhhh."

Ed sighed in utter enjoyment. There was nothing quite like a long sonic shower after finishing a long shift. It had definitely been a grueling day. He had had to tell Mustang that he hadn't gotten anywhere yet with the mystery space rocks, and then he'd been forced to endure a ten minute lecture on how, even though Mustang knew he had "other work to do," he really needed to finish his reports before he was "officially demoted."

However, feeling every last particle of grime and sweat scrubbed away by sonic pulse vibrations was beginning to make Ed forget about the crap day he'd just finished. At least, until there was a sickening thud, and then the shower began emitting a glass-shattering keen that raised every hair on Ed's body.

Hands clapped over his ears, he stumbled out of the stall and slammed the shower display to turn it off. Thankfully, the godforsaken sound abruptly halted.

"Great," Ed muttered, throwing the articles of his uniform around the bathroom until he found his comm badge.

"Edward Elric to engineering."

 _"Lieutenant?"_

"Can I get someone up to my quarters to look at my shower? I think the acoustic inverter's conked. I might have permanent hearing damage."

He heard LeCoulte's gruff acknowledgement.

 _"I'll send a grunt worker up there soon. Stick tissue in your ears to stop the bleeding."_

Even though Ed knew the chief engineer was joking (badly), he stuck a finger in his ear just to check. False alarm.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, Ed leaned against the wall of the bathroom, arms crossed. He knew it wouldn't be long before someone came up to fix the shower. A broken acoustic converter wasn't hard to replace.


	4. Impression, Asshole

Winry swiped a sleeve across her forehead, sighing when she realized that the oily smear was now probably a permanent fixture on her face. She was hopelessly behind in her tasks because some clumsy crewman had bowled her over on his way to the turbolift, causing everything in her toolbox to fall out. It had taken her ten minutes to sort and check the tools, and, on top of being late, she was _mad._

 _Who just knocks someone down in the middle of the hallway and doesn't stop to help?! I didn't see him that well, otherwise I would_ definitely _report that jerk._

Just when she had begun to get back on track, LeCoulte had interrupted her when she was in the middle of working on some specs for a tractor beam enhancement (something she was actually _interested_ in, for once). He had swiftly removed her from that assignment and sent her to check power relays in the Jefferies tubes. Which, by comparison, was sweaty, grueling, and demeaning. Winry was elbow deep in a particularly stubborn relay when he had interrupted her _again_ to inform her that one of the crew quarters on the upper decks had a shot sonic shower. Also…

"If you don't have it fixed in time to finish checking all the power relays in tubes 10 through 30 before the end of your shift, you'll end up in a manual-navigation-only shuttlecraft to find your way back to Earth."

Winry nearly curled up on the floor of the dank Jefferies tube and wailed. If possible, her job situation had only deteriorated since the ship's launch. When she wasn't on duty, she was too exhausted from her shifts to have any fun. She had barely seen anyone she knew since coming on board, and even though she supposedly worked the same shift with Fuery in engineering, she hardly ever saw him.

 _Probably because the chief engineer hasn't made it his personal mission to make Fuery's life a living hell. How have I done anything to deserve this?_

She crawled awkwardly out of the Jefferies tube, and made a passing effort to brush off her uniform and her hair. It was a lost cause. Hopefully she didn't leave too many sooty tracks as she walked down the pristine hallways of the ship.

Winry had never felt more greasy and discouraged than when she slumped down the brightly lit corridor on one of the upper decks, hauling her heavy toolkit. She unenthusiastically counted up the numbers on the doors until she reached the room with the broken shower.

Pushing the button, Winry waited to be admitted. After a couple seconds, the doors hissed open and she walked in. There was no one in sight, but Winry knew someone must have been inside to let her in. Or maybe whoever it was had just left the room unsecured because they knew an engineer was coming up to make repairs. She wondered if whoever lived here had decided to leave the premises while the shower was fixed. She didn't blame them—there was the possibility that the screeching would start up again during the repair process. Just to be sure, she called out while she walked over to the bathroom doorway:

"Anyone in here? I'm Ensign Rockbell from engineering, here to fix the sonic shower!"

This time she definitely heard something—it sounded like a strangled yelp from the general direction of the bathroom.

She quickened her pace, now a little worried that whoever was in there was hurt. "Is someone there? Are you all right?"

Her hand hovered over her comm badge as she stepped into the bathroom, ready to alert sickbay as quickly as possible. All in all, she really wasn't prepared for the sight she met with instead.

It was a naked guy. Well, a half-naked guy. A half-naked guy who currently looked like he was going to either run for it or pass out right there in front of her. A half-naked guy with long blond hair and golden eyes who was, quite possibly, the most attractive person Winry had ever seen.

Five very awkward seconds ticked by. Winry suddenly _really_ wished she had taken the time to clean herself up before running this errand. Somewhere outside her immediate panic, she recognized that the situation was ridiculous—a grease-covered and overtaxed engineer and a scantily-clad, gasping heartthrob, standing there staring at each other like English hadn't been invented yet. She cleared her throat.

 _Say words. Any words._

"H-hi there."

 _Oh God, don't stutter!_ she begged herself.

Her companion was obviously not as smart as he was good-looking, because the only thing coming from his mouth was a squeaky string of garbled syllables that never totally formed themselves into words.

Winry took matters into her own shaky hands.

"It's th-the shower—right?"

Half-Naked-Towel-Guy took a deep breath after several unsuccessful attempts to speak coherently. "Right," he finally managed to squeak out.

Winry hoisted her kit onto the counter, looking for any excuse to turn her eyes away from the other person in the room. She could feel her cheeks start to burn, and so, of course, she began to ramble.

"So it's the acoustic converter, right? Yeah, those things are always a little touchy, you have to service them every few months or they start shrieking like crazy, so obviously it's been a while since this one was looked at. I bet it wasn't even checked before we left the station, have you noticed anything weird about it recently? I think if I just replace the power cells it'll be all set to work again, I just need to grab my decoupler and see what exactly the problem is—"

"I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE A GUY."

Winry was hunting for a decoupler in her toolkit when she heard the outburst. She froze mid-sentence and looked blankly at her companion. Now that he had spoken normally—well, _shouted_ normally—she had recognized that voice.

"You—the 'grunt worker.'" He made air-quotes with one hand, keeping the other firmly secured on the towel. "I would have—if I—it's just—you're a _girl_ , and s-s-so—"

He stuttered to a halt, and even cowered a little when Winry turned to face him, standing up to her full height. His reaction was not entirely unwarranted; Winry could feel herself beginning to channel her grandmother. There were several problems here that needed to be addressed. The first was:

"It was _you_!"

"Huh?" His eyebrows drew upward in confusion.

" _You_ knocked me down in the corridor! I dropped everything in my toolbox, and you didn't even stop to help!"

She could see panic and guilt in his face as he obviously remembered the incident.

"Oh…well. I was late—"

The second problem:

"And what did you just call me? A _grunt worker?"_

"No! That was the chief engineer! He said that, not me!"

And finally:

"And why, exactly, would you assume I was male?"

"I don't know! It's just—it's engineering, and it's dirty down there, and—"

Things weren't looking very good for Half-Naked-Towel-Guy at this point. Winry's eyebrows drew together and she knew she looked every inch as terrifying as Pinako—and twice the height—at this moment.

"So you thought, because I'm an _engineer_ , that I'd be a _man_. Because _women_ aren't strong enough to carry around plasma coils, maybe? Or is it just because our brains can't process higher mathematics?"

"Look, don't go assuming—"

"And where do _you_ work, precisely, that gives you grounds to go making these sorts of speculations?"

Half-Naked-Towel-Guy, despite his significant lack of attire, wasn't cowering anymore. Winry's angry question caused his face to take on an irritated flush, and he took a step toward her, cornering her in between the counter and the shower stall.

"For your information, _ensign_ , I am the chief science officer on this vessel. I would suggest you cool it with the accusations."

Winry's eyes widened as realization hit. _So this is—oh, God. No. This can't be happening to me._ Though she did have to admit, this guy wasn't the "midget" she'd expected. Her voice was raspy in shock:

"So _you're_ the…"

She let her words trail off, realizing that the less she said on the matter, the better. If this jerk really was the chief science officer, she'd be smart to not antagonize him any more than she already had—as much as she wanted to take his head off with a wrench.

He evidently misinterpreted her lowered head and silence as evidence of regret for her outburst. Winry saw through her bangs that he was leering a bit self-righteously. What he didn't know was that Winry was only trying to control the pit of fury burning in her stomach.

He started to talk again after she broke off, his tone now condescending and nonchalant.

"It's perfectly all right, ensign. You didn't know my station, but from now on, please refer to me—respectfully—as Lieutenant Elric."

"Elric, huh?" Winry intoned. He still didn't catch the deadly pitch of her voice.

"Yeah, Edward Elric. Not that we're on a first-name basis or anything."

"No. Anything but." She raised her eyes to his again, and saw him recoil when her steely gaze bored into his. "I would appreciate it, lieutenant, if you would step aside and allow me to do my job."

"Of-of course, ensign. I'll just…" his gaze darted around the bathroom, looking for any excuse to get out of the tense situation.

"My suggestion, _sir_ , would be to put on some pants."

He looked like he had been set on fire. Making another strangled noise, he stumbled back from her and began snatching up various articles of his uniform from the bathroom floor. Resolutely, Winry turned away from the struggling lieutenant to focus on her original task. However, she still heard him loudly exit the bathroom, and then some irate muttering from the room next door, where he was presumably putting himself back together.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Winry tried to recover from the encounter by putting her everything into fixing the sonic shower. She found the decoupler in her toolbox, then removed the panel inside the shower that allowed her to reach the acoustic converter. As she suspected, the dried-up power cells were indeed the problem. In less than ten minutes, while trying to ignore the annoyed grumbling on the other side of the wall, she had swapped the old cells for new ones, and the sonic shower was back to mint condition.

Just as she was replacing the panel, Winry heard the main door to the quarters hiss open. She hoped that that meant Lieutenant Elric was finally leaving, but instead it sounded like someone else had just walked in. She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but the bathroom door was already open, and it was impossible for her to not hear the new voice as it called out:

"Hey Ed, how did your—wait. Why is your uniform on backwards?"

She couldn't hear Lieutenant Elric's response, except for something that sounded like a feral growl. It must have been some sort of coherent answer, however, because the newcomer shortly came into the bathroom himself.

"Hi! You must be the engineer."

Winry froze, halfway outside the shower with her decoupler and six dead power cells clasped in her hands. "Uh. Yes, that's me."

"My name is Alphonse, I'm Edward's brother." The new arrival extended his hand, then quickly brought it back when he saw hers were already occupied. "Hey, let me help!"

Before she could respond, he grabbed the decoupler from her and placed it gently back in the toolbox. She dumped the power cells into one of the side pockets, then turned to grasp his re-extended hand. He shook it vigorously.

"It's so good to meet new crew members! You are new, right?"

Winry, surprised at his astuteness, answered truthfully: "Yes, actually. I just graduated."

His grin grew even wider. Winry saw the resemblance between him and the lieutenant—same blond hair and golden eyes—but the boy named Alphonse was slightly taller, had short hair, and didn't always look like someone had just force-fed him Klingon blood pudding.

"An Academy graduate! Wonderful!" Then his tone lowered significantly, and he leaned a little toward her to prevent anyone else from hearing his next words.

"I really hope you didn't let Ed scare you. He's fine, it's just sometimes with strangers he can come off a little…eccentric." Noting Winry's grimace, he chuckled. "And it also doesn't help when you walk in on him without any clothes on."

This time she did laugh, although she was still fuming over the lieutenant's rudeness. Even the charm of Alphonse Elric couldn't appease her just yet. Still, Winry was starting to like the friendlier brother.

"Well, Alphonse, it was nice meeting you, but I have a chief engineer waiting for me who will throw me in the brig if I don't get back to work on time."

"Oh, please just call me Al. Everyone does." He walked her out to the door, and Winry was happy to see that the lieutenant had taken himself off to be unpleasant somewhere else. "And I'm well aware of how LeCoulte treats the newbies. You'll be fine—just tough it out until he thinks he's broken you in. He's all soft, really."

Winry's eyebrows shot up without her bidding. _The lieutenant is "eccentric" and LeCoulte is "all soft?" What world does this guy live in?_

Nevertheless, Winry waved back at Al as she left the room. His infectious optimism was hard to puncture, and Winry even found her own spirits lifting as she walked back down the hallway to the turbolift. She even thought that at some point, she might have to let go of some of her prejudice toward an officer who had never seen a day of formal Academy training.

Now if she could just find a way to be friends with Alphonse, while avoiding his jerk of a brother like the Vidiian plague…

* * *

Her long, hellish, shift was over. She had finished every power relay she had been assigned, with even a little time to spare. So it might have seemed odd to some that the first thing Winry did when she got back to her quarters—after finally ditching her filthy uniform—was get out her toolkit. However, this wasn't her Starfleet-issue engineering toolkit— _that_ she put away with fervent relief—but rather the toolkit that she had brought from home, lovingly packed and supplied by Pinako Rockbell. Winry knew that if the chief engineer didn't work her to death first, her grandmother would definitely murder her if she didn't at least _try_ to remember her skills with android limbs.

Winry had grown up in a strange microcosm, inhabited by people who chose to sacrifice their flesh-and-blood limbs for fancy, indestructible, enhanced droids. While the rest of the solar system embraced peace and diplomacy, the rather isolated Earth town of Resembool seemed stuck in the Wild West. In addition to the subdued hum of hover traffic, it wasn't an uncommon sight on the streets to see two testosterone-and-alcohol-hyped rubes flailing at each other. One would brandish a plasma cannon in place of a bicep, and the other, in response, would unlock his knee joint to reveal a rotating phaser bank. Winry quickly learned to steer clear of these skirmishes, as anything within a half-mile radius was liable to become collateral damage. As would be expected, the Rockbell Surgery and Prosthetic business made a booming trade. There were certainly many uses for android limbs—besides street brawls—that made them a hot commodity.

The artificial limbs could withstand searing heat, intense radiation, deep freeze, and any manner of abuse imaginable. Organic enhancements even allowed android limbs to feel stimuli with almost the same level of sensitivity as human skin, though that ability could be switched off and on at the will of the user. Most patrons apparently thought it was no sacrifice to chop off an arm or leg in the name of efficiency. Winry could see how droids might be useful to some. Those whose jobs took them into high radiation levels or extreme temperatures often found it tough to work with finicky tools in full protective gear. Anyone in possession of an android arm wouldn't face that particular problem; they would just need to be careful that no _real_ skin was exposed.

Of course, the majority of the Resembool denizens who wanted android limbs just wanted the extra strength and the enhancement capacity. Winry's best friend Paninya was no exception: her droids were equipped with pulse energy cannons that could level a small building. Her Academy entrance examination had included a binding contract that she would never make use of her built-in weapons against any of the other students. Winry had sometimes needed to forcibly hold her friend to that agreement.

Winry herself, ever since she heard the name "Starfleet," knew that her future was in space. Her parents had both been ship's doctors, and when Winry got the news that they had both been casualties of a surprise Romulan attack, her resolve to join the Federation was only strengthened. She needed to see the same stars they had seen, to fulfill their mission of exploring the galaxy. That motivation drove her through the grueling years at Starfleet Academy, and was the same motivation that now kept her from backing down from temporary difficulties like unreasonable chief engineers and rude, yet irritatingly attractive science officers.

Now that she was actually living her lifelong dream, Winry found that working with droids made her feel close to home. She really had enjoyed learning from her grandmother: how to precisely attune the positronic net to the human nervous system and how to create the durable polyalloy skin that would protect the delicate hypodermic sensors. When she had been busy studying transporter theory and advanced subspace geometry, Winry had been too distracted to give the Rockbell business her full attention. She had even thought it silly that her grandmother asked her to keep up her skills while she was on duty. However, Winry was grateful now. In a still-unfamiliar starship, hurtling countless kilometers away from her home, the familiar feel of the tools in her hands made her feel comfortable.

Winry worked closely on a severed circuit, the synthetic skin peeled delicately away from the exposed mechanics of the arm. She was so engrossed in her task that she didn't notice her roommate come in at first. She was alerted to Sheska's presence by the sound of a high-pitched squeak as the bespectacled ensign saw what Winry was working on.

"Ugh, that's _creepy!_ "

Winry laughed and put down her work. She stretched her arms high above her head and listened to her joints crack.

"Come on, you must be used to reading about android technology by now, Sheska. Now you're just seeing it in person."

Sheska was shaking her head vigorously, causing her large glasses to slip all the way down her nose. She pushed them up again as she answered, "I prefer pure theory to actual practice. Besides, don't you have _enough_ to do already without working on those…things…in your free time?"

Winry shrugged. "It's therapeutic. It's almost like I'm my own boss with this kind of work. I don't have to report my progress to anyone— _I_ get to decide when it's perfect."

Her bookworm roommate didn't look convinced. "It's _therapeutic?_ "

Winry laughed again. "Some people calm down and refocus by reading a good book and drinking something hot. I do it by working on disembodied limbs."

"Whatever works, I guess," Sheska giggled nervously, eyeing the detached arm like she thought it might come to life and chase her.

"But I'm done for now," Winry stretched again. "Ugh, this day has kicked my ass. There are definitely some people on this ship I want to stay far, _far_ away from."

Sheska looked curious, but the engineer didn't feel like going over the details of her encounter with Lieutenant Elric. Instead, Winry got up from the worktable and started walking toward the sleeping area. After a day like today, she didn't have it in her to brave the busy mess hall. She'd just take a nap now and later get something small from the little replicator in her quarters.

Collapsing on the bottom bunk, Winry threw an arm over her eyes to shut out the light. As she drifted off, her exhausted brain kept going over and over the acrimonious conversation she'd had with the science officer.

 _It makes it even worse that he's so damn pretty._

Thirty seconds later, before she had time to blush over that thought, Winry was sound asleep.


	5. Strength and Stealth

"No."

Mustang's declaration echoed in the science lab. Listening to his superior officer shoot down every single one of his excuses had Ed gritting his teeth and imagining various methods of dismemberment that would cause the maximum amount of pain. But he was still doing his best—his very best—to keep from spitting obscenities at the man.

"Sir, if I could just point out—"

"You've pointed out quite enough, and now _I'm_ pointing out that we need to destroy the sample before it poses a hazard to the ship."

"But then we'll never know anything about it!"

"We know enough about it to understand that it is dangerous."

Ed's already short supply of patience plummeted to zero. Mustang was just being an over-cautious idiot—which frustrated Ed all the more because he had no idea what the captain was really talking about. The particulates had been a devastating failure for the lieutenant, even though he had been slaving over them for two days. However, there was no reason to think the space rocks were anything more than harmless debris. Embarrassment over his inability to learn anything from them, combined with Mustang's infuriatingly tranquil demeanor, finally made Ed snap.

"Is this really what we're doing now?! Do we just go around blasting things we don't understand? I knew you were a kiss-ass, Mustang, but I didn't think you were a coward, too. Do you think this is how you're going to climb the stupid chain of command? By avoiding every potential defeat and throwing away any new information that could possibly inconvenience you?!"

"Lieutenant Elric." Commander Hawkeye's tone rang loudly behind him from the doorway, and Ed spun around to eye her warily. "This is not the time to be questioning orders."

 _Do these two go everywhere together? No, I've got it: Mustang is just a big baby and needs to take his badass escort with him whenever he has to do something difficult._

However, Hawkeye's measured words made Ed feel more chastised than any shouting match. "The captain's directive is for the safety of the ship. _Not_ a step towards a promotion."

Ed was about to open his mouth again, although he knew nothing good would come out, when Mustang's comm chirped. Hughes' voice crackled through from the bridge. It sounded like the lieutenant commander was whispering into his badge.

 _"Roy, get up here. NOW."_

Mustang's eyes widened in alarm. He answered quickly as he started for the door, motioning for Hawkeye and Ed to follow him: "Hughes, what's happening? I'm on my way."

 _"It's the_ USS Drachman _! She's hailing us! You have to come up to the bridge to talk to her—don't make me do this, please!"_

Mustang slid to an undignified halt immediately outside the science lab. Ed followed suit, freezing with terror when he heard Hughes say the name of the starship. The captain's head drooped forward and his shoulders slumped. Turning slightly, Mustang shot Hawkeye an imploring look, to which she merely responded by sighing heavily. Tapping her own comm badge, she spoke into it: "Hawkeye to the bridge. The captain's on his way right now."

Mustang still remained motionless as Hawkeye walked up to him. "Move along sir. We don't want to keep Captain Armstrong waiting."

* * *

A panicked Hughes sprang from the captain's chair as the three stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge. He scurried back to his security post as Mustang walked resolutely to the center of the bridge.

"Answer the _Drachman_."

The ensign at the comm station complied. Ice blue eyes and a steely countenance appeared larger than life on the viewscreen. Ed flinched ever so slightly, but couldn't help admiring the deep respect, bordering on fear, the legendary woman commanded from her crew and everyone she came in contact with. Captain Olivier Armstrong, of the _USS Drachman_ , wielded a cold beauty that would strike most men dumb—that is, if her warship's cannons didn't do the job first.

"Captain Mustang, is this a bad time?"

"There is never a bad time to talk with you, Captain Armstrong. It's been too long."

Ed grimaced. Mustang could try to charm the _Drachman_ 's impervious commander, but all he was really doing was making everyone else uncomfortable.

Armstrong's voice was utterly impassive. "Since it took you nearly ten minutes to answer our hails, it doesn't seem like you were overeager. But that is of no consequence. We require your ship's assistance."

Mustang's brief hesitation revealed his surprise. "In what way?"

"We need to track down something."

"Your sensors are as good as ours, captain. Probably better, actually."

"This is a matter of strategy, not technology."

Mustang paused again, this time to concentrate on his next words. They were not to Armstrong, but rather to the communications ensign.

"Transfer the _Drachman_ 's transmission to the ready room, Ensign Kijek." He glanced quickly at Ed, Hawkeye, Hughes, and the confused-looking, bespectacled operations officer who quickly tapped a few buttons to make Armstrong's face disappear from the screen. "Senior officers with me."

Ed fell in behind the ops officer, who looked positively shocked that Mustang had referred to her as a senior officer. The captain was now speaking through his comm badge to Doctor Marcoh, the ship's chief medical officer.

"Join the rest of us in the ready room, and tell LeCoulte to get here, too."

As they passed through the door from the bridge into Mustang's ready room, the captain tapped a panel and Armstrong's stern face appeared once again, this time on a much smaller screen on the wall. The five of them found seats around a table in the center of the room, each turning to face the screen. Ed ended up next to the now hyperventilating Ensign Kijek at the end of the table farthest from the screen. She sounded like she was muttering something to herself, and Ed looked at her a little askance. _Is she whispering a list of book titles?_

Mustang started speaking to the other captain.

"We're listening, Armstrong. In a few moments the chief engineer and chief medical officer will be here and you can tell us what's really going on."

Armstrong's gaze was focused and her tone resolute. "Very well, Mustang. But I don't have any good news."

Ed simply felt out of the loop at this point. Next to him, Ensign Kijek now looked a little as if she was about to throw up. Her whispered mumblings halted, and she looked over at him with embarrassment and terror written on her face.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she whispered shakily, just loudly enough for Ed to hear her.

"Wh-what?" he responded in bewilderment.

Her lip trembled, and then the panic began spilling from her mouth in rushed, barely audible sentences. "I'm supposed to be plumbing the databases for information on this sector of the quadrant. I'm supposed to make sure all the ship's systems have their correct power allotment, and I'm supposed to calculate when to reroute power to where it is most crucially needed. Sometimes, I'm supposed to press the button to start and end communications off the ship. I'm a technician, not a strategist! The captain must think I'm chief of operations…do you think he even knows that he's got it totally wrong?! My name is Sheska Kijek—do you think you can check with him and get the real ops officer in here? I wonder if anyone would notice if I just got up and left really quietly…"

Ed was about to reply that she needed to calm down and take a deep breath, and then tell her that if Mustang wasn't informed of who his senior bridge officers were, that he would make a pretty poor captain— _on second thought, maybe it_ is _possible—_ but at that moment the door to the ready room hissed open again. LeCoulte's intimidating figure appeared, accompanied by the ship's doctor, who was a much smaller man with salt-and-pepper hair and a heavy, distinctive scar across most of his face. The two found seats quickly, looking just as concerned as the rest of the older officers. Ensign Kijek slid down in her seat, resuming her whispered mumbling.

Mustang waved his hand towards the screen as soon as the two newcomers had settled. "Fill us in, Captain Armstrong."

"Solf Kimblee."

The name fell venomous from her mouth, and Armstrong's brows knit together over her freezing stare. "He escaped from high security two days ago. We don't know how he did it, only that the force of the explosion killed fourteen people—two of them were prison guards, and the rest were other inmates. We do know the warp signature of the long range shuttle he escaped in was tracked briefly by a science vessel's subspace sensors. Based on that trajectory, he would have passed through this sector twelve hours ago. Has your ship picked up any suspicious readings recently?"

Mustang and Hawkeye exchanged the tiniest glance before the former responded curtly, "No." Then he looked directly at Edward, as if he expected the lieutenant to react to his response. Ed, however, felt nothing but confusion and alarm.

"Well that's to be expected," Armstrong continued, paying no attention to Mustang's silent communiqués. "Kimblee is incredibly skilled at evading being tracked by Starfleet, even after a decade of imprisonment. But we know he has to stop somewhere, and soon. He took off in one of the prison's shuttlecraft, and even though it was one of their most powerful vessels, it only had enough fuel on board to last for 60 hours, maximum. He'll need to stop on a hospitable planet to either hide or refuel. It's our job to pinpoint exactly where he's most likely to take shelter."

Everyone around the table looked highly uneasy. Ed had heard rumors of the Starfleet traitor Solf Kimblee, but he didn't know the particulars. Kimblee had been involved in a number of highly questionable military incidents, but the actual reason for his imprisonment had to do with some sort of collaboration with Romulan terrorists. The evidence and Kimblee's trial itself were kept very low-profile, so as not to make matters worse between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Whatever he had done, Kimblee was universally hated, and his name was like a toxic breath in the room.

"Of course we will assist," said Mustang, breaking the tense silence after Armstrong's explanation. "But it goes without saying that caution will be our top priority. Kimblee is dangerous, no matter what power is available to him, and desperation on his part could lead to problems for us. I don't want to lead my crew into a death trap."

Armstrong raised one eyebrow. "The most weaponry he has available to him right now are the shuttle's limited phasers, and using those will drain his power supply even more. We need to worry more about his stealth, rather than his strength. My officers have an idea of what course he may have taken and which star systems are nearest—we'll transmit that information over to you. Communicate with me again when you're nearly ready to be underway."

She ended the transmission with a curt nod to the people in the room.

The senior officers sat for a moment, processing what they had just heard. Ed could see by the expressions on some of their faces that the idea of Solf Kimblee on the loose was an event no one had ever wanted to face.

"If she doesn't think Kimblee can really hurt anyone, then why would she ask us for our help?" he wondered aloud, after several silent moments.

Hawkeye was the one to answer. "It may not have seemed like it, but she's worried too. There's strength in numbers, and one of our ships may still make it out if the other is lost."

"Yes…but he isn't even in a warship," Hughes pointed out. "Flying one of those shuttles is about the equivalent—weapon-wise, that is—of floating naked in space."

"There is another problem," said Mustang. "Captain Armstrong was correct in saying Kimblee is a master of evasion. Why he would allow himself to get picked up on any sensor readings is very suspicious to me. He may be counting on pursuit."

"Surely he's forgotten what the stars look like after so many years in high security," LeCoulte's deep voice boomed. "Even hardened psychopaths can make mistakes, especially when they're so long out of practice."

Hawkeye sighed and set both her hands on the table. "Even if he knows we're coming after him, it doesn't make a difference. He may like to taunt Starfleet, but no matter what his challenge is, we have to answer it. Whether or not he's expecting us, we have to make every effort to bring him back to justice."

"Which _shouldn't_ be hard," LeCoulte chuckled. "I check up on the _Amestris'_ phaser banks and torpedoes personally. It's impossible for his little shuttle to outgun us."

To Ed's surprise, the silent Sheska Kijek spoke up for the first time, in a quiet, yet very steady voice. "Kimblee blasted his way out of a high-security prison and killed fourteen people. If he had that kind of ability under maximum supervision, having access to a shuttle is almost the same as if we'd handed him an arsenal."

No one particularly wanted to respond to that statement. Suddenly, Mustang's computer alerted him that Armstrong's transmission had completely downloaded. The next few minutes turned into the orderly chaos of assigning and distributing the material. The senior officers took what they needed on their PADDs and departed the ready room to their regular stations. Ed was about to follow Mustang out of the room, but Hawkeye quietly pulled him back by the arm.

He looked at the commander in surprise. There was a line between her eyebrows, giving her usually tranquil face an anxious cast.

"Ed, get rid of that sample before we begin pursuit of Kimblee."

"But, commander—"

"I know it sounds impractical and strange, but we really can't have anything compromising the ship's integrity right now. Mysterious particulates are just something we can't worry about. Trust me on this, Ed."

Ed was caught off-guard, and nodded mutely back at her without putting up a fight. She was still looking earnestly at him, and Ed thought she was about to tell him something else, but instead she resolutely pressed her lips together and pushed him out the door.

"Take care of it, lieutenant. After that, report back to the science station and work with Lieutenant Yao on your assignment."

First destroying the sample, then working with Ling? Not to mention an escaped convict—this wasn't turning out to be the best day.

* * *

Back in the science lab, Ed crouched for the last time in front of the particulates that had caused him so much grief. They had shown no signs of degradation, even after all the abuse he'd put them through in the name of discovery. This in itself was rather odd—whatever the substance was, it was incredibly durable, though boring as all hell. Definitely on a par with some of the most advanced Starfleet materials.

Ed sighed. _Another marvel of nature, into the incinerator._

He slowly tapped in his personal code that would override the safety and zap the particles into nothingness. However, as soon as his fingers touched the fatal key, a shockwave rocked his console and the controls went dead. Ed jumped back, seeing sparks fly from the keypad. Then he heard the clatter of something hard against a surface—the force field had failed as well, and the tiny rocks dropped to the lab table surface. He held his breath, waiting for some sort of catastrophe to occur.

Ed immediately felt foolish for his reaction. Of course the rocks were harmless. But this was certainly a problem. He couldn't just go back to the bridge and tell Hawkeye he'd had to leave the particulates—not just intact but out in the open, where _anyone_ could come into contact with them. There was really only one option, and his cheeks heated up as he remembered the last time he'd needed this type of assistance.

Taking a deep breath, he tapped and spoke into his comm: "Science lab to engineering."

 _"What is it, Elric?"_

"There's a situation up here—my console fizzled out and we lost a force field."

 _"I'll have to send one of the newbies. We're all pretty busy with prep for the mission."_

"That's fine. I don't think it's serious. Just…send someone fast."

The chief engineer grunted and cut the connection, which Ed took as assent. He felt odd standing there and twiddling his thumbs, waiting for someone to come rescue him, but he was lost without any power to his console. As much as he tried to put it out of his head, he couldn't stop thinking about what he had come to delicately term, the "shower incident." The more he replayed it in his mind, the more he realized that the argumentativeness of his demeanor had less to do with actual irritation, and far more to do with being caught with his pants down in a very literal sense. There was every indication to think Winry Rockbell now hated him. And that, for some reason, bothered Edward a lot.

Crimson spread from his cheeks to the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears as he remembered their heated exchange, and just how… _close_ …he had been standing to her. Though he hadn't even seen her in the last couple days, he could still remember how her blue eyes had sparked with fury, the rosy glow of her cheeks from either embarrassment or anger (he couldn't tell which, or maybe it was both), the smell of her hair, which was some odd, yet intoxicating mixture of grease and wildflowers.

Ed snapped from his reverie as he suddenly realized there was a distinct possibility that Ensign Rockbell herself would show up to fix his console. She _was_ one of the newest crewmembers…but there were quite a few of those, he reasoned with himself. Surely LeCoulte wouldn't send her—she was one of the best junior engineers down there. Even Ed had to admit that she had done a flawless job on the sonic shower. She would definitely be needed in engineering, and he would get someone else to do his repairs. Someone incompetent, and probably slow, and definitely not devastatingly cute.

Ed's comm badge chirped at him, and he jumped a little. Then he scowled as Mustang's voice came from it. _"Get up here, lieutenant. You need to be at the science station when we begin pursuit of Kimblee."_

"Yeah, I _know_ that. I'm just figuring out how to—"

 _"Captain Armstrong is_ very _impatient to get moving. Do you want to have to deal with her yourself? Because_ I _sure as hell don't."_

Ed gulped. Scary. But Mustang must have forgotten what he had told Ed to do before this whole Kimblee debacle started.

"Fine. I'll just leave these apparently oh-so-dangerous particulates out in the open in the science lab. That's your problem now."

Mustang gasped audibly, then nearly shouted into the comm: _"Why are they outside the force field, Ed?! And more importantly, why aren't they already destroyed?"_

"I haven't had all that much time to deal with them, sir. I'm waiting on an engineer to come take care of a blown-out console and emitter. That's what killed the force field—there must have been some sort of power surge."

Mustang paused, and Ed could sense his tension through the comm connection. _"Ah. Well, tell whoever gets there that they are not to touch the particulates under any circumstances. Just make sure the systems are working again. And you'd better be on the bridge in five minutes, or I'm putting Yao in charge."_

Ed huffed. Whoever turned up from engineering had better get here quickly.

Just as he was about to march outside and drag the first crewman he saw into the lab, the door hissed open and the repairman walked in. It wasn't Ensign Rockbell. Ed's stomach dropped a little.

The young engineer had glasses and dark hair, and looked a little jittery as he eyed Ed's annoyed countenance.

"Ensign Fuery here, sir. What's the problem?"

"Finally! I needed this console and emitter operational ten minutes ago." Ed spat, immediately realizing that his disappointment was manifesting as dick-ishness.

"S-sorry, lieutenant! Engineering is pretty swamped at the moment," stuttered the kid, as he hauled his tools over to the console and began fiddling with the front panel.

Ed took a few seconds to find his calm and moderate his tone. "Just…just make sure it's working by the time we engage warp again," he amended, making a huge effort to sound kinder. "Thanks. I have to get up to the bridge now, but let me know as _soon_ as it's fixed," he added.

Fuery looked up and nodded at him. Edward then pointed to where the inconspicuous rocks were resting on the emitter. "And _do not_ touch those, under any circumstances."

The engineer looked baffled, but nodded again, and returned his attention to the console's control panel. Ed hesitated for a few more seconds, checking one last time to make sure the particulates weren't reacting in any strange way to being outside the force field. As he suspected, they were just as boring as they had always been. Satisfied, he left the lab and headed for the upper decks.

* * *

"Does your crew know what we're up against, Mustang?" Armstrong's voice came through the captain's computer in his ready room, where he had returned after checking how things progressed on the bridge. Edward and Ling were predictably stepping on each other's toes, but somehow still managing to make progress charting the planets that would be most likely candidates for Kimblee's refuge.

"They all know we are tracking an escaped convict, and that his return to imprisonment is our top priority at the moment."

Armstrong chuckled mirthlessly. "So you keep secrets from your crew? On my ship, I let every man know the full story. That way they can each act in full knowledge of the circumstances, regardless of what may happen to their captain."

"That's because half the _Drachman_ 's crew is Klingon and the other half is Vulcan. The first would rather die in a blaze of glory and the second are too emotionally detached to care. Those of us in charge of other _humans_ have to consider the possibility of panic, Olivier."

"Those are some pretty sweeping generalizations coming from Starfleet's future commander-in-chief. You'll be shot down for xenophobic tendencies before you'll ever be able to challenge Bradley."

"And you'll be tossed out of the fleet for libel of a fellow officer. Wouldn't that be just tragic?"

Armstrong laughed again, a high, sharp sound that crackled through the comm line. "If we fail this mission, neither of us will have to worry about those possibilities."

The door to the ready room suddenly opened, and Commander Hawkeye stepped just inside, nodding once to Mustang to alert him that everything was ready. He held a finger up to her and returned his eyes to Armstrong's face on the screen. "On that optimistic note, I think we are ready on our end. We should be able to tell you which planet Kimblee is most likely headed for in a few minutes."

"Understood. Good luck, Mustang."

"Same to you, captain."

Hawkeye waited until the connection ended, and Mustang stood up to join her on the bridge. "Ed and Ling have narrowed it down to two planets in a nearby star system. One is M Class, but with no humanoid life forms detected; early stages of evolution, probably. It would be the most welcoming place to land. Scans also indicate high levels of natural resources Kimblee would be able to convert to power his small vessel."

Mustang scratched his chin. "It's possible. But if he knows he's being pursued, and if he has some firepower available to him, he's not going to make it that easy for us. He'll want some sort of environmental advantage, most likely."

Hawkeye nodded in agreement. "That's why the other possibility is a Class N planet, where he could only land if the stolen shuttle had environmental gear for him to wear. It's probable that at least one EV suit was in the shuttle with him. Also, on this planet the atmosphere is very disturbed—lots of magnetic storms—which will deflect many of our sensor readings. If he lands there, we'll have limited scanning ability, though a transporter beam could theoretically make it through."

Mustang listened, then grinned at his second in command. "Then we already have an advantage."

The captain strode onto the bridge, straight toward the comm station. "Ensign Kijek, I need you to send an encrypted, subspace transmission to the _Drachman_. We have our plan."


	6. Storm on the Surface

Captain Mustang's plan for retrieving Kimblee was simple, but the risk factor was high. Rather than bombarding the stolen shuttle with blind fire from orbit, the _Amestris_ and the _Drachman_ would launch a two-pronged attack. One of the _Amestris'_ shuttlecraft, piloted by helmsman Vato Falman, would draw Kimblee's fire from the sky. Meanwhile, crew members from the _Drachman_ and the _Amestris_ would beam to the surface, one team on each side of the ship, and surprise Kimblee in his shuttle—hopefully before the escaped convict could realize the _Amestris'_ craft was a mere distraction. Without the ability to apprehend Kimblee using either of the orbiting starships, this was the next best plan.

Or at least that's what Alphonse was hearing from Lieutenant Commander Hughes, who was leading the _Amestris'_ away team. Hughes had called the younger Elric brother to the bridge in order to rapidly bring him up to speed on how the mission was going to be conducted. Backing into the ready room to go over final details with Mustang, the head of security finished giving Al the mission briefing.

"You and Ed are both part of the team going down to the surface with me," Hughes finished as he retreated into the ready room to go over final details with Mustang. "Get yourself an EV suit from storage—it's nasty on the surface!"

Nodding in acknowledgement, Al waited for the officer to disappear into the ready room, and then sidled over to the currently empty science station to get a better look at where exactly he'd been ordered to go. The planet growing ever nearer on the ship's sensors was showing every sign of being incompatible with human life. Magnetic storms swirled in the atmosphere, scattering the readings, but it was easy to see there was no water, minimal vegetation, and what life existed was tough and unfriendly. As the _Drachman_ and the _Amestris_ drew closer to the turbulent world, Alphonse couldn't help but wonder if the captain altogether knew what he was doing.

"Remind me again," Ed's voice came from behind Al as he stared at the science station's monitors, "why _you_ have to be on the away team too?"

"Because I'm nothing short of a miracle in combat." Al turned and grinned at his concerned brother. "It seems like I ought to have beaten you enough to hammer that into your head."

"Seriously, Al," Ed lowered his voice, even though no one was near enough to catch their conversation. "Armstrong's people are all heavyweights. Frankly, I don't see why they need any of _us_ to go along at all."

Pausing and looking flustered, Ed immediately punched his fist into his hand and practically shouted, "Not that I'm afraid of going! It just seems like overkill for one criminal, that's all!"

Ed glared at Alphonse as his brother kept laughing.

"This sort of thing requires _finesse_ , brother—which makes me question a little why you're on the team at all."

Al finished chuckling and turned back to study the sensor readout. On the other side of the bridge, Hughes and Mustang emerged from the ready room. The captain's shoulders were confidently squared, and Hughes was laughing, probably at one of his own jokes, but Al couldn't disperse the cold feeling of unease that was seeping into his stomach, quickly dissolving his merriment of moments ago.

Al heard Mustang direct Hughes to go to the transporter room and make sure everything was in order for the team's trip to the surface. As the lieutenant commander departed the bridge, Mustang strode over to Ed and Al at the science station.

"There will be a small team on the surface," he informed them tersely. "The storms only allow four people to beam down at once. The _Drachman_ has agreed to also send down four from their ship."

"Who's the last one with us?" Al asked curiously.

"One of the newest ensigns." Mustang grimaced a little. "And don't let her behavior or appearance fool you. Hughes assures me that she's one of the most promising members of his team."

Al glanced at Ed, not knowing to whom Mustang could be referring. His brother shrugged, looking equally lost.

* * *

"I'm _really_ not sure why you're so gung-ho on this."

Winry watched Rebecca put an arm through her environmental suit, zipping it up the front all the way to the collar at her neck. Her friend looked a little like she was wrapping herself in copper foil, but the flimsy material would supposedly protect its wearer against the harsh atmosphere and chalky storms on the planet's surface. Winry eyed the suit skeptically.

Rebecca did not seem to share her concern, but was instead positively buoyant at the news that she had been selected for the away team.

"Lieutenant Commander Hughes recommended me himself! This is incredible!" She grabbed the suit's helmet from the storage unit and tucked it under her arm, turning around to face Winry, whose dubious expression clearly showed that she didn't think this sort of recommendation was good news.

Rebecca took one look at her friend's tense posture and gave her a broad, reassuring smile.

"Relax, Win! The guy down there is outnumbered eight to one. I'll be back in five minutes. Promise."

Winry sighed. "At least let me check your suit. Who knows when someone last maintained this thing? The sealant could be expired, or the oxygen hose could be broken, or—"

Rebecca cut her off with a hand wave and an indulgent chuckle. "If you insist."

As Winry poked the controls on Rebecca's suit, she tried to get comfortable with the idea of her friend going on such a dangerous mission. She had anticipated challenges on this starship, but it hadn't occurred to her that the crew would ever need to be in charge of apprehending one of the most dangerous criminals in the last century. Rebecca seemed to be caught up in the thrill, but Winry had lost loved ones in space before. Now, she was trying her hardest to not let her caution get in the way of her professional duty to the _Amestris_ , and her personal duty to make sure Rebecca set off on the mission without adding unnecessary worry.

Rebecca once again seemed to sense her friend's discomfort. Resettling the helmet under her arm, she spoke cheerily: "Think of it like this: you've been hauling ass in engineering ever since coming on board, and suddenly the Demon wants you to personally…oh I don't know…eject the warp core or something important like that. It shows that you're moving up! That's what this feels like for me."

Winry laughed. "Ejecting the warp core is _bad_ , Becca. He'd eject me right along with it."

"Oh please. At any rate, you understand what I'm saying. Hughes talked to the _captain_ about me…"

Rebecca's eyes glazed over with vacant adoration at the mention of Mustang, and Winry patted her shoulder as she finished checking her suit. "Join me in reality again, please! And whatever you do, _don't_ fantasize about the captain. I've heard…things…about him."

Rebecca sighed heavily. "Yeah, you're probably right. Besides, he's too obsessed with his second-in-command to ever look at a little ensign like me."

"Whatever happened to you and Toothpick Boy?"

"Jean Havoc? Oh, we had a fight. About guns."

"Why do guns always seem to end your relationships?"

"That makes me sound like a trigger-happy psycho girlfriend, Winry."

"If the shoe fits…"

Rebecca socked her playfully in the arm. "Let's not talk about boys before I head off on this potentially deadly mission, okay?"

"Good thinking. How about something more important—like how you'll stay alive down there."

Before she could answer, Rebecca's comm badge chirped insistently, and Hughes' voice carried through.

" _Ensign Catalina? Meet us in transporter room one. We've just received the transmission from the_ Drachman _that they're ready to go."_

Rebecca tapped her badge. "Acknowledged, sir."

She then pulled Winry into a tight hug, causing the engineer to let out a small gasp. Her friend was a bruiser.

"Stop worrying, silly. No one's gonna die down there, least of all me. I still have to come back and give Jean hell for dumping me."

* * *

Mustang stood facing the viewscreen on the bridge, legs apart and arms crossed, when Hawkeye silently took over Hughes' place at the security post. He conscientiously waited for her to make eye contact with him before tapping his comm. He hailed the shuttle bay, where the _Amestris'_ helmsman waited for his signal aboard the _Black Hayate._

"You're set to launch, Lieutenant Falman. Don't give Kimblee a chance to look away from his shuttle's sensors."

" _Clear, sir."_

A few seconds later, the viewscreen showed the _Black Hayate_ jet into the planet's atmosphere, its enhanced shields repelling the vicious magnetic turbulence that would throw a larger vessel off course.

"Better give him a few minutes to fully distract Kimblee before sending anyone else down, sir."

"Agreed, commander."

Glancing over at the communications officer, Mustang spoke sharply. "Alert Captain Armstrong on my signal. She'll know when to send her people down."

Sitting back down in the captain's chair, Mustang drew his hands together and clenched his fists in his lap where no one else could see them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Commander Hawkeye eyeing him intently. He might be able to hide his taut anxiety from the rest of the crew, but his perceptive first officer could read him like a book.

However, he could read her too. Both of them were on the same wavelength, nerves stretched tighter with every passing second.

* * *

Alphonse, Edward, and Hughes were locking their helmets on as the last member of the team hurried into the transporter room, tucking the end of her wavy ponytail into her collar.

"Sorry, sorry!" she smiled apologetically at them as she finally clicked her helmet into place. "Long hair is kind of a curse sometimes."

Al snickered and glanced at his scowling brother, whose long ponytail had required three minutes of cursing and struggling before it was unsnagged from his EV suit collar.

Hughes waved them all onto the transporter platform, then turned to the crewman behind the console.

"How's the transporter lock going to hold down there?"

She scanned her screen. "I can keep a steady lock on your coordinates for fifteen minutes. The captain also has the comm connection piggybacking off the transporter lock, so you'll still be able to communicate with the ship for that amount of time. After that, it's a bit more touch-and-go…especially since there's a big storm coming up soon over the target location."

"Hear that, friends?" Hughes looked to his team. "Let's make this a short mission."

Al nodded, Ed shrugged, and Ensign Catalina saluted enthusiastically.

Mustang's voice issued from Hughes' badge: _"Armstrong's men are prepared. Engage transport when ready."_

Hughes acknowledged the message, and then gave the go-ahead signal to the crew member behind the transporter console. She tapped a few buttons, slid her fingers up the panel, and everything outside the glass of Al's helmet dissolved.

* * *

" _Rockbell, get yourself up to transporter room one."_

Winry nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of the chief engineer's voice carrying through her comm badge. She had been trying not to wear a track in the floor of her quarters with pacing, but her instincts were screaming at her that something was going to go very wrong with the mission. She felt ridiculous for getting so worried about something everyone else seemed to think would go smoothly. Therefore, an assignment from engineering was something she would be all too happy to occupy herself with.

"Right away, sir. Is there a malfunction with the transporter?"

" _They'll explain it to you there. Get moving."_

"I'm on my way."

" _Make it count, ensign."_

Winry allowed herself a small smile. Despite his personal prejudices, the chief engineer couldn't deny that her work so far had been exceptional. And he seemed to have made his peace with her family connections, because he was commissioning her with more complex and interesting tasks than just routine maintenance these days. The Dominic LeCoulte of the past would never have sent her all alone to work on a transporter.

Slinging the strap of her toolbox over her elbow, Winry took off for the turbolift.

* * *

" _Nice place to land, huh?"_

Al heard Hughes' voice inside his helmet, and he turned to look at the rest of the away team as they finished materializing on the planet's surface. The environment probably looked bare and lifeless on a good day, but currently the landscape was buffeted by a blistering, sulfurous gale, which swept everything within view into a whirling, rust-colored haze. Visibility was poor, to put it mildly.

Al took out his tricorder, which would currently do more for him in terms of reading his surroundings than his eyes would.

An unfamiliar, gruff baritone was the next voice Al heard from the receiver in his helmet.

"Amestris _team, do you read us? This is Commander Buccaneer, leading the_ Drachman _team."_

Hughes answered right away. _"Lieutenant Commander Hughes here; we're getting you loud and clear. Is this the same encrypted line we used to confirm plans with Captain Armstrong?"_

" _Affirmative. Is your shuttle doing its job?"_

" _Kimblee should be distracted by Falman right about now. The shuttle launched several minutes before we beamed down here."_

" _What are we standing around for then?"_ The man named Buccaneer chuckled raucously. _"Let's end this miserable_ p'takh _."_

Al jerked his head toward where Edward stood to his left. His brother glanced up from his own tricorder with a surprised look on his face.

 _I'm glad the Klingon's on_ our _side_. Al kept the thought to himself with a smile.

" _Stun only, Buccaneer! We just want to get him back into confinement."_ Hughes sounded a little frantic, and Al snorted.

" _Just an expression, lieutenant commander. A morale booster."_ Buccaneer's voice also sounded slightly amused.

Through his helmet, Al saw Hughes scowl slightly. _"Let's take this seriously, now. This is a dangerous man we're after. Move in with caution."_

With that, the team began making their way towards the grounded shuttle, which faded in and out of visibility through the rusty storm pressing in around them.

* * *

Winry arrived in transporter room one, looking around curiously to see if anything was out of the ordinary. Seeing her enter, the transporter technician waved her over.

"Is something wrong?" Winry set her toolbox down and tried to read over the officer's shoulder to find out what was going on.

"Not yet," was the answer. "The captain wants someone on standby in case things go south and the mission takes longer than the time we have."

Winry suddenly felt that her concern was warranted. If Captain Mustang wanted an engineer waiting in the transporter room for something to go wrong, she couldn't stop herself from assuming that this assignment was more serious than she had been led to believe.

 _I can't let this change my approach. I'm needed here to make sure the team gets back safely, and that's exactly what I'll do._

Squaring her shoulders, Winry turned her full attention to the technician. "Okay. Tell me what we need to do."

* * *

" _Amestris_ to away team. Hughes, report."

" _We're approaching the shuttle now. No sign of Kimblee, so it seems that he must still be inside the shuttle. Falman must be doing a good job distracting him."_

Mustang stood up and walked over to Hawkeye's post, nudging her over so he could see what the _Black Hayate_ was doing. His second-in-command looked only a little annoyed that he had pushed her out of her post, cocking one eyebrow and moving aside deferentially.

Mustang kept talking into his comm. "Well, I would agree with you, except he hasn't fired once on the shuttle, so—"

At that exact second, a shockwave rippled from the planet's surface, crashing against the hulls of both orbiting ships and sending Mustang heavily into Hawkeye's side.

" _Holy SHIT!"_ Hughes' voice over the comm echoed pure incredulity.

The captain righted himself, hurriedly helping his subordinate up from the floor of the bridge.

"Did you see if that came from Kimblee?!"

" _Yeah—Roy, this is—hold on—"_

"Wait just a second, I have to check in with Falman."

Mustang cut the connection, frantically hailing the _Black Hayate._

"Falman, talk to me."

" _Still in the air, captain, although that was close. It definitely came from Kimblee's shuttle."_

"Can you handle any more of those?"

" _I guess we'll find out."_

Mustang growled. "Not reassuring, but we'll try to make this as speedy as possible."

Returning to the away team's channel, Mustang hailed Hughes again.

"What are you seeing down there?"

...

"Hughes?"

Hawkeye pushed him out of the way and ran a diagnostic on the connection. "Something's blocking the signal. That means we've lost transporter ability too."

Clenching his teeth, the captain punched his communicator and asked for transporter room one.

 _LeCoulte better have sent an engineer there. This is exactly what I was afraid of._

* * *

The explosion rang in Al's teeth, and his eyeballs felt like they were vibrating in their sockets. Shaking his head, he opened and closed his jaw to pop the pressure in his ears. He moved a little, and realized he had been knocked to the ground. He pushed himself up and saw that the rest of the away team was also recovering from the blast. Ed was trying to pull his phaser out, Ensign Catalina was working on wiping the red dust off the front of her helmet, and Hughes was already on his feet again. It looked like the lieutenant commander was trying to hail the _Amestris_. After a few seconds, Hughes shook his head.

" _We've lost communication with the ship."_

Ed had gotten to his feet again and after checking that Al was unharmed, began pulling on the ensign's arm, helping her get up again. He answered Hughes:

" _Let me guess, now our time constraint is even more important?"_

" _Exactly."_

Al found his footing again, and the team resumed moving forward toward the dimly emerging shape of the shuttle. Just a few steps further, and they all saw another shape—smaller, darker, and much nearer than the stolen craft.

"Is that one of the _Drachman_ people?" Al asked, shading his eyes and squinting through the billowing dust.

" _I think it's—no, wait—EVERYONE GET DOWN!"_

Hughes' shout was the last thing Al heard before another blast surged through the storm, this one aimed directly toward the away team. Al was knocked backward again, landing heavily with his ears jangling painfully. As his hearing slowly returned, he thought he heard cold, inhuman laughter puncturing the silence.

* * *

"I think now is a good time to mention that I only took intermediate transporter theory at the Academy," Winry said in a small voice, staring blankly at the intricate calculations that covered the screen of the console.

"No, now is the _worst_ time to mention that, actually," said her irritated companion, who was busily engaged in figuring out why exactly the away team had simply dropped out of range. To make matters worse, Captain Mustang's voice broke into the room, sounding loud and savage as he demanded to know why all contact with the team on the surface had just been lost.

Winry looked at the other officer, who gestured impatiently at her to give the captain an answer.

"Well…um…we are working on finding out right now."

" _You need to do more than find out. You need to_ fix it. _"_

"Of-of course, sir. It probably has to do with that blast from the surface. It seemed to interrupt all primary systems briefly before the generators kicked in again."

" _So you're saying that because our transporter lock got cut off and we don't have sensors, there's no way of locking on to the away team?"_

"Yes, that's it."

There was a pause. Winry felt like she was shrinking as she waited for Mustang's next words.

" _We need sensors, Ensign…"_

"Rockbell, sir."

" _Ensign Rockbell. Get me our sensors back. We need a way to recover our people."_

"Understood. You'll have them."

As the connection ended, Winry told herself to push past her panic and think. The sensors were useless, but the transporter still worked. If there was a way to use the transporter to establish a connection, then maybe…

She snapped her fingers. Darting out of the room, she called back to the very confused crewman: "Don't stop working on that! I'll be back soon!"

* * *

" _I'm trying to establish a transporter lock on them, sir, but the first shockwave took out my primary sensor array and it's all I can do to fire in the general direction of the shuttle."_

"Understood, Falman. Keep him busy and we'll work on the rest from here."

Mustang was hoping against hope that Kimblee would need a few more minutes to generate the next hit, because there was no guarantee the _Black Hayate_ would hold up against another assault of that magnitude. It was bad enough that he had lost the away team, and judging from Armstrong's last transmission, it didn't look like she had any contact with her team either. The success of the mission rested with the people battling their way through the storms on the planet's surface.

He watched Hawkeye's fingers move with almost impossible speed as she calibrated and recalibrated, trying to establish any type of sensor lock beyond the dense blizzard of magnetic pulses blocking them from the surface. The ensign at the operations console had redirected power from almost every available system, and it still wasn't enough.

Mustang admitted with considerable aggravation that Kimblee really knew how to use an environment to his advantage. The _Amestris_ was blind, and soon maybe crippled.

* * *

Al wasn't imagining it. Someone was laughing. A sound that really shouldn't have been able to cut through the surging storm winds and the rush of dust, but was nonetheless high and clear and fanged with insanity. He struggled to get up, but he felt slow and heavy, pressed down by the increasing winds and the fogginess of his brain after two explosions.

Ed's voice crackled through his helmet, tone edging towards true fear.

" _Al? Al?! Say something!"_

With enormous effort, Al sat upright, looking around for his brother and the two other members of the away team. He found Ed still to his left, face turned toward him and flooded with immense relief that he seemed unharmed. Ensign Catalina was sprawled behind them, beginning to move again, and Hughes lay on Al's other side.

Al found his voice again. "Lieutenant Commander, do you know what that sound is?"

Hughes wasn't moving. But something else was. Right in front of where the away team was recovering, a figure moved into view.

Al thought his brain had been shaken a bit too hard by the last explosion, because even though the new arrival was humanoid in appearance, it wore no protective gear whatsoever. Its skin, though slightly greenish-tinged, was unscathed by the whipping dust. Barefoot and lithe, it stepped toward Alphonse, and he looked directly into its face.

The laughter had stopped, but Al somehow knew that this…creature…was its point of origin. There was no mistaking the deranged, poisonous smile on its eerily perfect visage. Al was frozen, staring into the face of something that should never have existed. Its purple eyes were transfixing; Al couldn't look away from them. His breathing stuttered, then halted, as the thing pointed its weapon—a standard, Starfleet-issue phaser—directly into Al's face, and began to press down on the button.

" _ALPHONSE!"_

Edward's voice, more than any fear he felt from looking at the creature, snapped Al out of his paralysis. Something orange launched itself in front of the phaser, and in a split second Al was rolling himself toward the unmoving form of Hughes and out of the weapon's path.

There was a click, then the world exploded again as something warm and heavy landed on top of Al. He shut his eyes tight and curled inward, waiting for the shockwaves to pass. When they did, whatever had just landed on him seemed to start moving again. Al heard something—a weird, crackling noise that sounded like a badly tuned radio. But the much louder noise was Ed's voice echoing in his helmet again. He was gasping spasmodically, every breath catching between a sob and a wheeze.

" _Al—Al—are you okay? Ah-AAAAHHH! Shit, shit, oh no—"_

"Ed?! I'm fine—I think—but get off me, we have to—"

Al struggled out from under the body on top of him and managed to get to his knees, but froze when he saw his brother. Or rather, _most_ of his brother. Ed's body was shaking uncontrollably as he fought to stay conscious, to overcome the blunt agony of having his left leg messily severed well above the knee.

Al nearly collapsed forward at the sight of his brother. The wound was blackened and not bleeding, so it must have been right on the edge of the phaser's direct fire. Thick tendons and bone shards smoked at the end of the stump, directly exposed to the fierce dust storm. Rusty granules were already embedding themselves in the charred remnants. Al blessed his environmental suit for keeping the smell of the seared flesh outside, but the sight alone brought him to the brink of retching. The radio crackling was getting louder in his head, pounding at the front of his consciousness.

Ed's dry hacking had stopped, and Al saw his brother's helmeted head thump to the ground. He hoped with everything he had that passing out would just give Ed an escape from the pain, and wouldn't lead to more serious complications.

Al was roughly called back to the struggle at hand by another heart-stopping laugh from the inhuman creature, which cut through the static in his ears like a scalpel. Then, the thing spoke to him in the same cold voice, each syllable lilting upwards with a kind of hellish beauty.

"Ooh, that must have hurt."

Al stared back, his voice gone again. He couldn't concentrate; there were too many voices in his helmet behind the static, screaming at him.

It kept speaking. "Well you're no fun. I like to hear them talk a bit before they die. I like to hear them give me all the reasons I should let them live."

Al glanced quickly down at his brother, then back at the thing standing in front of him.

"What are you? Are you Kimblee?"

The questions seemed unimportant, but Al's mouth spoke them anyway.

That laugh again. "I'm no petty criminal!" The sharp-toothed grin bent towards him, hungry and sadistic.

"I'm what you might call… _Envy_."

At once, the sound of a phaser discharge ripped through the air, and the thing called Envy cursed. Al saw its weapon spring out of its hand like it was alive, and he looked around to see Ensign Catalina, once again on her feet. She was standing behind the creature and seemed to have shot the weapon right out of its hand.

Envy sprang over the away team to retrieve its weapon, and before Al could say anything, the ensign threw herself towards him.

" _Get him!"_ She motioned to Hughes, and Al dragged the lieutenant commander towards where Ed lay.

Ensign Catalina held something small up in her hand, but Al couldn't ask her what it was because she was screaming at him again.

" _Grab on—NOW!"_

Al obediently reached for her, one arm still around Hughes' still form. He saw her speak into her hand, and to his shock he heard her, faintly, through the miserable static invading his ears.

" _Ready!"_

Al turned his head to look back at the Envy creature, which had retrieved its weapon and was pointing it again. Those purple eyes widened in shock as the away team rippled, flickered—then disappeared from the midst of the red storm.

* * *

"Did it—work?"

Winry was afraid to look up from the console. She looked over at her companion, who was silent, mouth agape. She looked to her other side, where the captain and Commander Hawkeye now stood after rushing down from the bridge. They were both staring at the transporter pad as well.

Rebecca Catalina's voice answered her. "It worked. Winry. It worked."

She jumped, and found the courage to look up at where the away team had rematerialized. Two of them were moving, taking off their helmets and breathing in the air of the ship: Rebecca and, to Winry's surprise, none other than Alphonse Elric. The other two were still lying motionless on the floor of the transporter pad.

"Hughes! Ed!" Mustang leaped onto the platform and knelt beside the two unmoving forms. At the sight of the slightly smaller body, he gasped sharply and hit his comm badge, barking into it: "Get the doctor to transporter room one, _now._ "

Winry watched him kneel beside the taller body, beginning to shake it, and her vision began to waver. Mustang's eyebrows drew together; he was calling, shaking, and calling again. She was dimly aware of Doctor Marcoh rushing into the room, medical tricorder in hand. He dropped to his knees next to Mustang and began running the device over the form that belonged to Maes Hughes.

Winry didn't need to hear the doctor's words to confirm what everyone in the room knew. Lieutenant Commander Hughes was dead.


	7. Phantoms

A/N: To any medical professionals reading this...I am truly sorry for anything I get wrong. I try to know my stuff, but I don't have a degree in sci-fi surgery, as cool as that sounds.

* * *

 _Two young men stood in the main hallway of Starfleet Academy, staring up at the enormous emblazoned logo on the wall:_

"Ex Astris, Scientia."

" _Ironic, isn't it?" remarked the taller, green-eyed boy, pushing his rectangular glasses up farther on his nose._

" _What is?" asked the other. He appeared slightly younger, though that might have been due to his unruly mop of black hair and vaguely mischievous demeanor._

" _The more we explore the galaxy, the more we realize we don't know. So knowledge doesn't really come from the stars. The stars are just telling us we know a whole lot less than we think we did."_

 _The younger man shook his head and grimaced._

" _Don't get philosophical on me. It's too damn early in the semester to be thinking about astronomical truths like that."_

" _When_ else _am I supposed to think about them?"_

" _The words just sound cool, Hughes. Don't read too much into it."_

 _The other student chuckled._

" _If you want to get promoted quickly, you might consider not blurting your opinions whenever you so much as feel like it."_

" _I really doubt anyone but you is going to be quizzing me on the Latin inscriptions decorating the halls of the Academy."_

" _Then consider it extracurricular training. My personal contribution to your climb through the ranks."_

" _Couldn't you just hire me a tutor for interstellar ethics?"_

" _I'm afraid that would be a lost cause, Mustang."_

 _The boy named Mustang scowled prodigiously, and his friend laughed outright, clapping him on the back so hard he nearly staggered._

" _Which is why you'll need to forge bonds with intuitive people, who are good with tact and communication—people like me!"_

 _Hughes checked his watch, then hoisted his bookbag higher on his shoulder._

" _We'd better get moving. Wouldn't want the future commander-in-chief of Starfleet to have a black mark on his record."_

" _Oh shut up."_

" _You know, if you had a wife, she'd make sure you were always on time."_

" _One of these days I_ will _deck you."_

 _The half-serious threat and Hughes' unrestrained laughter echoed in the sunlit hall as the two figures shrank in the distance._

* * *

"Here to check on me, commander?"

Hawkeye ventured into the room just enough to let the door slide closed behind her. Mustang didn't turn to look at her; his hands were clasped loosely behind his back, face turned towards the expanse of stars outside the ready room window.

Less than six hours ago, the same stars had seen them eject the capsule containing Lieutenant Commander Hughes' body.

There had been no time for a prestigious, planned ceremony. The senior bridge officers and Hughes' security detail had been present, but no words were spoken. The silence around his simple casket was broken only by the occasional dry sob from Rebecca, halfheartedly muffled in Jean Havoc's shoulder. Afterwards, Mustang had disappeared into the ready room, leaving his second-in-command to take on the duties of captain.

More urgent than a funeral was another conference with Captain Armstrong, who had succeeded in recovering her away team without too much incident. Apparently it was only the _Amestris_ ' officers who witnessed combat on the planet's surface. After both teams were back on the ships, the _Amestris_ and the _Drachman_ had withdrawn to a safe distance: far enough to be out of range of Kimblee's enhanced weaponry, but close enough to still keep tabs on the grounded shuttlecraft. So far, there had been no sign that Kimblee or the bizarre life form called Envy were trying to leave the planet.

The first order of business was to decide how to handle what was now a much more complex and treacherous mission than anyone had imagined.

The commander tested the waters:

"Armstrong has suggested that she beam aboard the _Amestris_ to discuss our next move."

No reply.

"This is not something you can put off, sir."

His hands tightened into fists behind his back.

"I think Armstrong can stand to wait a little longer."

Hawkeye's footsteps were noiseless on the thin carpet, but she knew he could feel her approach. She didn't need to touch him for his back to stiffen.

"Captain, there was no way we could have logically known that Kimblee had—"

He cut her off, the dull edge of pain blunting his interruption.

"Please don't bring up logic at the moment."

She waited. He continued, his words thin as glass.

"…I should have been down there too."

"Then it might have been _you_ we would have had to send off in that casket," she shot back.

"And maybe…maybe we would have all come back alive."

Her hand hovered over his shoulder. She refrained from touching him still, not because she feared impropriety, but because he might break apart in her grasp. If Hughes were here, she would have asked _him_ to come talk to the captain. The lieutenant commander had never been silver-tongued, but he always knew how to restore Mustang's focus after a difficult mission.

He had also always been the one to speak at funerals.

Hawkeye took a deep breath, and finally rested her palm on Mustang's shoulder.

"Protect the people you care about. It's the least you tiny humans can do for one another, right?"

His head twitched slightly towards her, the familiar phrase triggering his response.

"You've got an entire crew standing behind you. They take their cue from you. If you refuse to face them now, you're walking away and leaving them all alone. Do you really think that's what Maes Hughes would have wanted from you?"

She could feel the tension and grief rippling from him like currents of hot wind. She was pushing him to explode, and she was standing right in his path.

Well, she could take it.

"We've got a psychopathic killer and some sort of freak of nature sitting on the surface of that planet, waiting for us to surrender. The last thing your crew needs is a captain who lets his personal losses get in the way of his responsibility to his ship."

He barked a short, deadly laugh. When he responded, his voice was more of a growl than anything else, but he wasn't the husk of a man he had been five minutes ago.

"Your pep talks are truly awful, commander."

"This isn't a pep talk, sir. It's a reality check. Hughes deserves to be mourned, but in the meantime the rest of us deserve to _survive._ "

He spun around suddenly, and her hand flew off his shoulder. The expression he wore was the same as when he ejected Hughes' casket into the vacuum of space—tight, tortured—but his eyes seared through her. She had reminded him what he should burn for.

"Give me thirty seconds."

She looked up into his face intently, then nodded.

"Acknowledged, captain."

She was walking out the door again when his low voice reached her:

"I have to survive, commander. You won't let me get away with anything else."

* * *

Alphonse was still waiting, having been kicked out of sickbay by Doctor Marcoh during the time it took for Edward's condition to stabilize. May Chang's gentle tap on his shoulder after hours of waiting nearly gave him a heart attack.

"He's all right. Sleeping now."

Her eyes were soft and concerned, and he knew her next words would hold a question about his own welfare. That was a backseat issue at the moment.

"Can I come in now?"

"Al…"

"I just want to see how he's doing. Then I'll go eat and rest. I promise."

Her forehead creased, but she beckoned him out of the hallway into sickbay. The air smelled sharply medicinal, and the lights turned his skin faintly green as May led him to the end of the row of beds, where Edward now lay. His brother was covered up to the neck by a thin sheet. Al knew Ed's expressions well enough to know that he was experiencing no pain at the moment. His right hand hung down below the sheet by the side of the bed, its position loose and open in slumber.

Al looked lower, and noticed the definition of Ed's right leg through the sheet. The other…

He cleared his throat quietly, and looked down at May beside him.

"You and the doctor couldn't save it?"

She threaded her fingers through his, stroking his thumb with hers.

"To put it simply…no. We couldn't do anything about his leg."

He swallowed.

"Maybe if we went back to Earth…?"

Her sympathetic gaze was all the answer he needed. She tugged on his hand, leading him over to the chairs near the doctor's station. He looked around briefly.

"Where's Marcoh?"

"He went to talk to the captain. We have a little time; I can tell you everything we know now."

Al let go of her hand, and sat down in one of the sterile, white chairs, bracing his elbows on his knees. May took a seat next to him, her mild tone taking on a professional crispness as she began to explain.

"Under normal circumstances, we would be able to reattach the leg, because, for one, we'd _have_ the leg to begin with. Even without the original leg, we'd be able to stabilize his system enough to attach a new organic limb once it was available. You know about all this already, so of course you're wondering why this isn't an option."

He watched her intently, and her lips pursed as she sought the words for something that apparently still confused even her.

"Whatever hit him—there's something…not right about it. It makes the stump…unfriendly, I suppose you might say…to organic material. It's like there's something still inside the wound that would break down any foreign limb we tried reattaching. It made using the dermal regenerator impossible. We have to let the stump heal on its own—if that's even still possible."

She paused, giving Al his chance to speak.

"Even after you cleaned the wounds, something was still preventing artificial regeneration?"

"Yes. We hope though, that it won't slow or halt any of Ed's natural healing. From what we've monitored already, it seems like the stump has a chance of healing up on its own, with minimal guidance from us, but there's always room for doubt."

She looked him straight in the eye.

"The good news is, the abnormality is localized to just the stump. His other injuries—scrapes, bruises—they were all easily healed with the dermal regenerator."

Al looked over at his brother's still form.

"But his leg will never be replaced."

May placed her hand over his again.

"Edward is strong and stubborn—practically to a fault. Kind of like someone else I know."

Her lips turned up.

"He's going to be fine."

Al put his other hand over hers and squeezed.

"I hope he doesn't tear sickbay apart when he wakes up. This isn't going to go well for anyone."

* * *

" _Alphonse! MOVE!"_

 _Ed didn't know why he and his brother were still on that damn planet, nor did he know why they were the only two still left there from the away team. His ears were ringing from the explosions, and the rough dust tore at his hair, his eyes, his fingernails. Looking down, he saw he wasn't wearing any protective suit over his uniform. Shouldn't that make him dead?_

 _Al was in the same situation. Except he was sprawled on his back on the ground, and Ed was standing next to him, limbs frozen. Envy was there too, slowly lifting the phaser with grotesque fluidity, laughing that cold, crazy laugh._

 _Ed found his movement again, and before the phaser could discharge, he stuck out his hand to grasp the barrel and direct it up into the sky. In doing so, he came face to face with the creature. Instead of the purple eyes he remembered, he saw coals: two stormy red pits of heat, burning into his brain, screaming with too many raw throats._

"Help us, please! _"_

" _What the HELL IS GOING ON?" Ed spat at the face in front of him. The screaming and the laughter wound in and out of each other, and he was suddenly out of air, like a boulder was being lowered onto his lungs._

He was the one screaming, and the weight on his chest was just the pressure of his depleted air supply. Every nerve in his left leg told him he was being stabbed, frozen, and set on fire all at the same time. His eyelids felt like they were sealed shut.

Now there were different voices swarming around him. Al and the doctor.

"Are you restraining him?!"

"He's going to thrash himself off the bed if we don't strap him down."

"What about another sedative?"

"It's not safe to give him more with the medication that's already in his system. Not to mention whatever's happening with his—May, get his other arm before he hits something with it."

His arms were pinned to a surface, his hands balling into fists, clenching and unclenching as he was finally able to refill his lungs.

"Edward!" the doctor's voice called to him.

His own rasped back, weak from effort:

"I don't understand!"

"What don't you understand, Ed?"

"They want me to help them!"

"There's nothing you could have done."

The doctor was speaking in a soothing tone, and Al and another voice, May Chang's, were communing in the background:

"Is he hallucinating?"

"I don't see any reason why that would happen. Maybe he's remembering shielding you from the phaser blast?"

"…Maybe."

The shriek bubbled up in Ed's throat again, wordless and chaotic. After his air was gone again, he heard a new voice. The captain. Mustang's footsteps and another softer set of footfalls approached the bed.

"I brought her here myself, Marcoh, but what is going on? You said he wouldn't be awake for several more hours!"

"This isn't what I expected, but then again, this is a type of injury I've never seen before. We can only estimate what the effects will be."

"I CAN'T HELP THEM!"

The volume of his own cry surprised Ed himself, and he heard a small gasp next to the place where Mustang's voice had come from.

"What is he talking about?"

The new voice was familiar. He had heard it once in person, and a thousand times in his own head. Winry Rockbell.

"He might be reliving what happened with the away team. That's the closest we can come to figuring out what he means."

The doctor didn't sound too convinced of his own explanation. Ed tried to say something about the red coals, the burning voices begging him for assistance, but all that came out was another aching scream—this one much quieter than the others, since his throat had all but given out.

"Ensign Rockbell, I thought you would get a chance to see what you have to work with, but obviously that can't happen at the moment."

Mustang sounded both worried and frustrated, and a surge of annoyance pushed Ed back into control. Furrowing his brow, he forced his eyelids open, wincing at the brightness of the space around him.

He kept his eyes half-closed to be able to focus on the faces gathered at the edges of his vision. Doctor Marcoh, May, and Al were at the sides of the bed; the captain and Winry Rockbell were stationed at the foot. He was obviously in sickbay. But the captain didn't work in sickbay. Neither did random engineers.

"What the hell are you all doing here?"

His voice was little more than a harsh wheeze, but the line between the doctor's eyebrows instantly disappeared, and Al's face relaxed noticeably—but not before his eyes jumped down to where Ed felt the spirals of pain oh-so-gradually receding from his left leg. Al's gaze returned to Ed's face almost instantly, but he had already betrayed that something was very wrong.

"What do I have to do to get an answer around here? Mustang?"

The captain, to his credit, didn't avert his gaze when he answered:

"Lieutenant, how does your left leg feel?"

"It feels like someone's been jabbing it with pain sticks for three days. Why?"

Ed then looked at the engineer, who only looked a little disconcerted when his still bleary gaze fell on her.

"And what is _she_ doing here?"

Mustang took a deep breath.

"Ensign Rockbell is an expert with android prosthetics. She is here to…assess…you as a potential client."

Ed tried to laugh, but all that came out was a truly pathetic whining sound.

"Your jokes are bad, Mustang. Stop trying to be funny."

"None of this is a joke, Edward."

"Fine. Which limb are you gonna chop off then?"

He wiggled his fingers and toes experimentally, challenging the captain with the lift of one eyebrow. In the few seconds it took for Mustang's expression to change, Ed realized that his left toes weren't responding normally. Or at all.

"No."

His head flopped onto the pillow, the pain from what was obviously now his phantom leg flooded back, and the world in front of his eyes spun into blackness.


	8. Agent of Destruction

A/N: I know Lan Fan's last name should be Yao, but that would get pretty confusing. Therefore, I have changed it.

* * *

The job of a starship captain was far less glamorous than it was cracked up to be. Mostly, it involved tiresome bureaucracy, brown-nosing, paperwork, and meetings. _Lots_ of meetings.

Immediately following Commander Hawkeye's wake-up call, and at no small risk of life and limb, Mustang pushed his tête-à-tête with Armstrong until the very last minute, supplying her with the excuse that he needed to immediately fill the vacancy left by Hughes. The post of chief of security and tactical officer shouldn't remain empty for long.

It didn't require much deliberation on his part to fill the interim position with the very capable Lan Fan Zhanshi. The Betazoid lieutenant, sporting an exemplary performance record as both an officer and the leader of her own security detail, accepted her new status with a silent nod and a glance toward the science station, where Ling Yao was being kept very busy as Ed's temporary replacement.

After his short conversation with Lieutenant Zhanshi, the captain hailed sickbay to ask how the real science officer was faring.

" _He is in fairly stable condition at the moment,"_ was Marcoh's reply. _"But I need to come speak with you in person about some complications we've had. That is, if I can get past his brother. Alphonse has been pacing the hallway for the last several hours."_

"Come up here and tell me what's going on."

" _Right away."_

Having retreated to the ready room once again, Mustang sat down to wait for the doctor. He spared a glance outside the window to where the _Drachman_ was hanging in space next to them. He could practically imagine the steam pouring out Olivier Armstrong's ears at his prolonged dismissal of her. _Ice queen indeed._

Within minutes, he heard the chirp signaling someone's request for entry, and immediately allowed Marcoh inside. Witnessing the marked tension on the doctor's face, Mustang rose from his seat.

"You said he was stable, but it doesn't look like you have good news."

Marcoh grimaced slightly, and gave the captain a simple, yet thorough description of Ed's prognosis, including the devastating news that his leg could not be reattached or replaced.

The captain's fists clenched, but his eyebrows drew upward inquisitively after hearing the doctor's halting explanation on why Ed would have to remain an amputee.

"So, something in the weapon that was fired at him is still lodged in the stump?"

"It's not really so concrete or simple as that. But…yes. Whatever it is has evaded detection on any medical tricorder readings, or on any of the other equipment we have in sickbay. The only option we have at this point is to aid his own healing process, without too much interference."

Mustang brought his hand up to his face, massaging the skin at his temples.

"But his leg is gone. Forever."

"Yes, sir."

Mustang tried not to think about what this would mean for Edward. It would almost certainly relegate him to imprisonment behind a desk at Starfleet Command. Considering the life he and Alphonse had led before joining the fleet, the experience and knowledge both the Elrics possessed were too valuable to lose. However, it was certain that Ed would never have the same opportunities as any other officer in possession of a complete set of limbs.

For someone with Ed's temperament and drive, Mustang couldn't imagine worse torture than being confined to a single place. And to be forced into it under these circumstances…

The captain's eyebrows drew even closer together, and he shook his head thoughtfully.

The door chirped, and before he could sink more deeply into his thoughts, Mustang answered:

"Enter."

In walked Sheska Kijek, accompanied by an aura of frenzied activity and tapping furiously on a PADD.

"I'm sorry to bother you sir, but Captain Armstrong is getting more persistent, and I can only hold her off for so long. She's threatening to fire across our bow if you don't—"

She looked up from her screen to see the doctor still waiting in the room, and Mustang standing at the opposite end of the table with one hand to his forehead.

"Is—is something the matter?" she questioned, only the slightest quiver marring her tone.

The doctor shot a sharp glance at Mustang, who answered it with a nod. Addressing Sheska, his explanation was terse:

"It's one of the injured members of the away team. He was with Hughes and the others on the surface, and got hit with the same pulse that killed the lieutenant commander. His left leg is gone."

Sheska's eyes went huge behind her glasses.

"But—you can fix that, right?"

She turned appealingly to the doctor, who shook his head and offered her a briefer version of the explanation he had given Mustang.

She nodded gravely after hearing the full news, but to Mustang's surprise, she didn't seem shocked. On the contrary, it looked like the ensign's brain was moving at about a lightyear a second.

After Marcoh again stated that the stump would have a chance of healing on its own, both men were floored when Sheska's face practically lit up with enthusiasm, and she exclaimed:

"It might sound crazy, but I think I know someone who can help!"

She beamed at the two of them, eyes sparkling, before instantly recovering herself and resuming an appropriately sober expression. Turning to Marcoh, she calmly inquired:

"Doctor, have you ever done any research on android prosthetics?"

* * *

"Rockbell, you've got company."

Winry glanced up from the plasma regulator designs on her screen at the sound of LeCoulte's voice, and gasped as she saw who stood next to him. Snapping her feet together, she straightened up and fixed her gaze forward.

"Captain Mustang, sir!"

The captain smiled, and motioned her at ease.

"Ensign Rockbell, I wanted to personally thank you for your ingenuity and quick thinking that helped us rescue the away team from the attack on the planet."

Winry's ears burned, even while icy guilt flooded her stomach. _Not all of them._

"Thank you, sir."

He offered her another smile, and gave the chief engineer the smallest of glances. Taking the cue, LeCoulte strode off, probably to terrorize another junior officer. Winry nervously watched him depart, wondering why the captain would request a private conversation with her. He must have better things to do, considering that Kimblee was still freely roaming the planet. She gave him her full attention, but couldn't help noticing that some of the other engineers were glancing curiously in her direction. Seeming to observe the same, Mustang walked over to look at her screen, and lowered his voice so eager ears wouldn't pick up his next words.

"I have to ask—how did you do it? Without a sensor lock, it must have been difficult to find a way to get everyone back again."

Winry couldn't figure out why he was asking her questions that the transporter chief or LeCoulte could easily answer. But she wasn't stupid enough to keep the captain in ignorance.

"Well…I have to admit, I wasn't sure it would work."

She cleared her throat, and he gave her an encouraging nod.

"The credit should go to Rebecca, really. She figured it out more quickly than I thought anyone would. I helped her check her EV suit before she left, so I knew about the configuration of the communication relays built into the suits."

She paused to make sure he was still following, and was given another nod.

"The only reason we lost contact with them was that weird energy pulse that disrupted the primary systems right? So I figured if I sent down an activated comm badge to carry the signal from the ship, I could reach someone through the suits' relays. The signal was distorted and grainy after being bounced so many times, but I was able to reach Rebecca. She answered me right away. That was how I was able to gain the coordinates of the away team. We beamed up the comm badge itself, making sure that all the suits connected to it were included in the transporter lock."

She stopped, a little out of breath after her explanation, even though she had simplified it a great deal.

The captain was regarding her with a stare of incredulity and more than a little admiration.

"That was brilliant, Ensign Rockbell."

She felt her cheeks heating up again.

"Like I said, I was counting a lot on the people down there to figure out what I had planned. And Rebecca caught on at once—she found the badge I beamed down, and gathered the others together to make sure we could lock on more easily from the ship."

"Rest assured, Ensign Catalina will receive my personal thanks, in addition to an official note on her record. As will you."

After his sincere affirmation, Mustang's tone dropped to one more serious and concerned.

"We may need your considerable skills again soon—but I am afraid it's for a very different purpose."

He gave her an assessing look before continuing, as if he wanted to make sure she wouldn't get scared off by what he had to say. Her curiosity was piqued, and she didn't back away from his gaze, though what he said next _did_ catch her very much off guard:

"It has been brought to my attention that you are a skilled mechanic, with a particular specialty in android prosthetics."

Winry's eyebrows shot up, and she stumbled over her response.

"W-well, yes, but why would anyone care about that here? No one really uses droid limbs outside Resembool, unless it's a really special case."

Mustang exhaled heavily, and beckoned her to follow him out of engineering.

"Let's talk about this on the way to sickbay, Rockbell. We _do_ have a rather unique case that may need your expertise."

The two left engineering amid a faint buzz of whispers. Winry caught Fuery's eye on her way out the door, and he looked just as bewildered as she felt.

Listening to Mustang's explanation on their way up to sickbay didn't do much to answer any of her questions. Furthermore, hearing that the recipient of her skills would be none other than Edward Elric rendered her momentarily speechless. To her relief, Mustang didn't seem to notice her sharp gasp on hearing the name, or how quickly the color rushed into her cheeks.

When the two walked into sickbay, she was still less prepared for the scene that unfolded before her. She felt truly helpless as she listened to the lieutenant's pained gasps after each new wave of agony. His incoherent, yet insistent ramblings were still less comforting, as they seemed to mystify everyone else as much as her. Even Doctor Marcoh and the captain looked worried and lost after his lapse from reality.

The following brief moment of lucidity didn't do much to build up her confidence, and all things considered, Winry's first meeting with her potential future patient left her extremely shaken.

Discounting the unpleasantness of her first meeting with Edward, she had serious doubts about her own ability to put him through surgery and rehabilitation by herself. In the past, her grandmother had always been there to provide supervision and support. Now, she was absolutely alone.

Eventually, all was quiet again in sickbay. The doctor and May hovered over Edward's motionless body after he lost consciousness the second time. The captain had left them, leaving strict orders to alert him if Lieutenant Elric woke, and Alphonse was once again wearing a track in the floor with his continued pacing. Winry had taken a seat near the doctor's computer, and was staring fixedly into her hands, attempting to make sense of what she should do next.

After informing her of the lieutenant's condition on the trip to sickbay, Captain Mustang had assured her that the decision to accept him as a patient was entirely up to her. Yet, Winry was painfully cognizant that Edward's future rested in her hands. If she refused based on personal preference, fear of her own incompetence, or even regard for Edward's life, she would really just be distancing herself from a situation where she alone could provide the most help.

She looked up from her hands as the brother of her current problem took a break from his pacing to sit across from her. She could tell he was trying to appear optimistic, but his distinct pallor and the lines in his forehead spoke otherwise.

"Winry, I'm so sorry about that. We really thought he'd just be asleep the entire time you were here."

She took a deep breath. Now was not the time for her to add any weight to Al's load of anxiety.

"Please don't apologize. If I'm going to work with him, it's better for me to know exactly what he's going through. And, as it turns out, that's exactly what I saw."

Al's eyes brightened a little.

"So…you're going to do it? You'll give him a leg?"

Her stomach flipped. How could she refuse? But still, it was only fair to let him know her limitations.

"I will do _everything_ I can. But…I'm not my grandmother. I've never done this alone, much less halfway across the quadrant without access to my usual supplies."

It was hard to maintain steady composure with Al's hope-filled face across from her.

"If you do your best, I believe you can help him," he said, in a much lighter tone than before. "I mean—you got us back, didn't you? No one else could have done what you did. You're a genius!"

Winry very much wished his high regard for her wasn't misplaced. She tried to return his smile, but her eyes kept wandering to the bed where her future patient was—thankfully—staying quiet.

 _I guess I just made a promise. I really, really hope I can keep it._

* * *

 _The dimness was broken only by a few flashing lights that etched afterimages into the hazy air. An electric hum flowed beneath the silence—the familiar sound of a shuttlecraft's idling systems._

 _Everything was tinted with subtle crimson, including the pale faces floating in the dark. One was slightly greenish-tinged, lips stretched over pointed teeth in a skeletal grin. The other face was equally disquieting: the face of something that might once have been human, but over time all its human nature had been shredded cleanly away. All that remained now was primal hatred, and an unquenchable thirst for bloodshed._

 _A voice rasped from the second person, harsh with the telltale grittiness of disuse:_

" _Well, what now?"_

" _We stay right here."_

" _It would be just as easy to blow their ships out of the sky."_

" _Not an option."_

 _The corners of the man's thin lips crept upwards._

" _You want to see them burn as much as I do, don't you Envy?"_

 _The creature let its fingers slide over the barrel of the phaser in its lap as it replied:_

" _You have no sense of the finesse or the delicacy this plan requires. You allow your desire to be an agent of destruction gain command over you—it's no wonder you were caught and locked up."_

 _Purple eyes lifted to Kimblee's cadaverous face, and Envy's grin somehow stretched even wider:_

" _That's why I'm in charge."_

" _You're not really in charge though, are you? You're too unpredictable and hasty to have masterminded something like this."_

 _Envy's fingers tightened around the weapon._

" _Something like_ what _, exactly?"_

 _Kimblee chuckled._

" _Thought you had hidden it so well, didn't you?"_

 _His hand came out of his pocket, bringing with it a tiny, seemingly inconspicuous object. In his fingers, a stone no larger than a pearl pulsed with a living red glow. He watched with satisfaction as Envy's eyes widened, and set the stone down on a nearby shelf. At the loss of contact with his skin, the glow subsided to a dying ember, and faded completely, leaving nothing but an innocuous looking pebble. Still, Kimblee kept his hand right next to it as he answered his own speculation._

" _You're making more of these."_

 _At once, the scene rippled wildly, and the red tint dissipated from Envy's dumbstruck expression. The outlines of the two people in the shuttlecraft disappeared into sterile light._

Ed's eyes snapped open, his senses reeling from the intensity of the dream. He didn't immediately recognize where he was, but it wasn't really that important.

Could it really be called a dream? It felt like he had been sitting right next to Envy and Kimblee. Or rather, like he was floating inside the shuttle cabin with them.

And worse…

 _I've seen that kind of stone before._

There were fragments of one just like it, sitting innocently in the _Amestris'_ science lab.


	9. Arcanum

**A/N:** I can't apologize enough for how long it's taken me to update this. All I can say is that school got overwhelming, and then I finally managed to start writing again, and then school got overwhelming *again*. I know most of you are pretty great about understanding writers' schedules and constraints, so I thank you in advance for your kindness.

With that said, enjoy the chapter! :)

* * *

"What do you mean, we're not going after Kimblee?!"

The dead silence of the room and the volume of his own shock magnified Mustang's voice in his ears. It was unlike the ice queen of the _Drachman_ to back down from anything, least of all a seriously dangerous criminal who had threatened her crew.

Olivier Armstrong didn't flinch at his accusatory tone. She stood in the _Amestris'_ ready room with Buccaneer at her right, and a white-haired officer whom Mustang had never seen before on her left. He stood slightly behind the other two, as if observing the scene, and Mustang could immediately tell from the nose ridges and traditional earring that he was a native of Bajor. Watching the newcomer closely, Mustang noticed he had remained quiet ever since the small cohort of officers beamed onto the _Amestris._

The captain glanced quickly to his right, where Hawkeye was standing, to see if any glint of recognition passed over her face. Her steady features betrayed nothing, and he felt a twinge of annoyance. His second-in-command was one of the few people who could occasionally mask her reactions from his quick eyes, and sometimes it really threw him off.

He returned his attention to Armstrong when her cold, calm voice carried through the room:

"We were all under the impression that Kimblee was alone. Now, it appears he has an ally, and a very dangerous one at that. We simply don't have the firepower necessary to go after him. We can either wait and call for backup, or follow him and that _thing_ into the next trap they're setting for us."

An irritated growl built up behind Mustang's teeth, but he caged it in. He had to admit, she wasn't entirely wrong.

Hawkeye spoke at his shoulder, and he envied her restrained, reasonable tone.

"Captain Armstrong, I hope you'll allow me to point out that we now have a pretty good idea of how Kimblee escaped. It obviously wasn't a one-man attempt. We've also seen what he and Envy are capable of, and how crucial it is that we catch up to them as soon as possible. Backup from the Federation will take days to arrive, and by the time that happens, we'll be even further from apprehending Kimblee."

Mustang's jaw tensed as Hawkeye left the most troubling observation unspoken. It wasn't just as simple as an escaped convict and his psychopathic jailbreaker. What's more, he was convinced that Armstrong was fully aware of everything he and the commander still weren't saying.

To Mustang's surprise, the hitherto silent Bajoran, rather than Captain Armstrong, addressed Hawkeye's rebuttal.

"It would be best for us all to acknowledge the real issue at this point: namely, that Kimblee may be in possession of a power source that hundreds of factions across the Alpha Quadrant would commit atrocities to get their hands on."

He spoke with a deep, distinctive voice, the barest trace of an accent curving through the vowels. Stepping out from behind Armstrong and towards the table in the ready room, he swiveled the computer to face the group and typed a few rapid keystrokes. Several files sprang onto the screen from the ship's database. Then, he stepped away so the information was visible to everyone else in the room.

Mustang saw one word highlighted throughout the first few lines of text.

"Arcanum," he said quietly.

Silence blanketed the room for an instant. Then, Buccaneer barked a short laugh of disbelief, glancing at Armstrong as if expecting her to dismiss the thought. However, her focused gaze darted between the Bajoran officer and the computer screen as if trying to memorize every detail. When she didn't react as expected, Buccaneer asked incredulously:

"You don't seriously think a mythical compound is Kimblee's secret weapon, do you?"

Mustang hesitated only a second before saying assuredly:

"It may not be mythical at all."

He tried to ignore Hawkeye's stare boring into the side of his face. Pausing, he answered his second-in-command with a succinct nod. It was time to give up all the information on what they both had suspected for some time. He continued:

"My injured science officer was studying a potential sample of Arcanum just before we came in contact with the _Drachman_. The sample is still sitting in the lab right now."

Armstrong's eyebrows shot towards her hairline, while the officer who had been perusing the database pivoted rapidly to stare at Mustang, open-mouthed. Buccaneer, after a second of dead silence, burst into raucous laughter.

"Always one step ahead of everyone, aren't you Mustang?! I've never seen anyone surprise Miles like that before!"

Mustang finally approached the unfamiliar man and extended his hand, which was accepted in a brief handshake after the other had sufficiently recovered from his shock.

"Miles, is it?" Mustang confirmed, and the officer nodded.

The captain then rested an elbow on the back of one of the chairs, turning towards the other three in the room with an expression of mild impatience.

"Well, now that the introductions and life-altering secrets are out of the way, how about we sit down at this table and actually share what we know?"

He could nearly feel Hawkeye mentally kicking him in the shins. Situations like these were why he was an explorer and _not_ a politician.

Miles gave a small, half-amused smile before sitting down at the table. As the rest of them took seats, the level of tension in the room dropped noticeably. Mustang knew the situation was serious, but now that honesty was part of the environment, they could finally begin working towards a new plan. He looked at Captain Armstrong, who was staying curiously quiet, letting her two subordinates do most of the talking. Seeming to anticipate his question, she explained:

"My knowledge on this particular subject is limited, which is why I brought Lieutenant Miles with me. He has spent most of his life studying Arcanum, and his Academy project on the origins and basis of the myth sparked most of the scholarship on the subject. I'll let him talk to you about what he knows."

Turning back to Miles, Mustang now felt the slightest spark of familiarity at the name. It was connected with one of the more esoteric philosophy classes he'd slept through at Starfleet Academy. He and the other officer appeared to be close in age, so it wasn't incomprehensible that they had attended at the same time.

Miles nodded at his superior after her introduction, and folded his hands in front of him on the table. The computer faced towards where they sat, the screen displaying the known information on Arcanum. Mustang noticed that the database contained no pictures.

"Arcanum, if we look at it correctly, is more than some sort of mythical compound or power source. The idea of a bottomless source of energy is universal to every culture. Earth has its version, and so do Bajor and Qo'noS. Even Vulcan has something that fits the archetype," he nodded pointedly towards Hawkeye when her stoic expression betrayed slight disbelief.

"Described in ancient philosophy, its powers were varied: it could give people eternal life, turn base metals into gold, provide limitless knowledge. But as people's priorities and desires changed, the function of Arcanum changed as well. The age of technology demanded energy, and more of it. Electricity wasn't enough, nuclear power became unstable and inefficient, and even solar energy had its limits. Scientists and modern philosophers were still fascinated with the idea of an immensely strong and inexhaustible resource for more energy."

Mustang leaned forward. His brain sped through the implications as Miles kept explaining.

"For centuries, Arcanum belonged only in thesis papers and lecture rooms, but the myth stumbled uncomfortably close to reality some time ago. You've all heard of the _Ishvala_?"

Everyone around the table nodded. In one of the most baffling cases of starship vessel disappearance in recent history, a small Bajoran ship called the _Ishvala_ had vanished near an unstable wormhole nearly twenty years before. At the time, it was written off as a tragic accident due to negligence and outdated equipment, but questions began to arise when not a speck of rubble was found near the entrance to the wormhole. At the very least, the gravity well inside the anomaly should have torn a few parts off the ship, but there was nothing left behind—not even a warp signature.

Miles pressed the tips of his fingers together slightly, and took a deep breath before continuing.

"Anyone reading the report on the _Ishvala_ 's disappearance would probably skim over the note at the bottom saying that every trace of the vessel had vanished—everything except for a few fragments of an unidentified compound that were considered unimportant. However, after those particulates were beamed aboard the Starfleet vessel sent to scout the area, they were stolen from off the ship. Since no one at the time thought the particulates meant anything special, and since it would look rather bad for the fleet if someone managed to slip onboard and steal something without setting off any alarms, the incident was never officially reported."

Mustang's shoulders tensed as Miles paused. He had known about the particulates that were found at the site of the _Ishvala'_ s disappearance, and he had even read the brief lab notes on what the sample contained. However, he had never heard that those discovered near the wormhole had been stolen from right under the Federation's nose. Miles was laying the groundwork for something that, although plausible, meant that they were facing a threat exponentially more powerful than anything they had yet dealt with.

When Miles spoke again, it was directed only to Mustang.

"However, if you can confidently say that you have Arcanum aboard the _Amestris_ , you must already know what was so peculiar about the compound."

Mustang nodded, remembering what the report had said about the strange particles. He answered:

"It is impossible to classify, and nearly impossible to force a reaction from. I didn't want Ed experimenting with it for too long because I wasn't sure how stable it would remain. However, he ran enough tests to confirm that it was the same substance as that found at the site of the _Ishvala_ 's disappearance."

He didn't mention that he had specifically ordered Ed to destroy the sample before the away team left for the planet.

Hawkeye took the short silence as an opportunity to ask Miles:

"If the substance you are calling 'Arcanum' and the myth itself are truly connected, then why hasn't the compound proven itself more useful? All it has really done so far is sit in the lab and frustrate Edward."

Miles leaned back in his chair, pushing his pointer fingers together and tapping them against his mouth. Mustang himself considered the commander's question, recognizing that much of the proof rested with what had happened on the surface of the planet, and the insanely effective power surges from the shuttle. _That_ was certainly no myth.

When the Bajoran answered, he sounded slightly frustrated, as if he _should_ be able to connect all the pieces together but couldn't quite figure out where the edges met.

"The compound found near the wormhole twenty years ago was jokingly called 'Arcanum' because of its mysterious composition. Still, when I studied the lab report, I couldn't help but feel that there was something everyone just wasn't seeing. I was determined to find that answer in my research, which was why I studied the subject at the Academy, and afterwards. I could never find the missing link. But, now that I have seen what Kimblee managed to do in a few short days, there is no doubt in my mind that he has access to something defying explanation. The shockwaves coming from that shuttle were far greater than anything weapons alone could have generated."

Mustang thought of how easily the away team had been overpowered on the surface, and how close they had come to being wiped out completely. Instead, Hughes and Ed were the only casualties, and thanks to Winry Rockbell, the latter would be on his feet again. Still, it was unnerving how easily Kimblee had outmaneuvered, them—and all without even showing his face. Then, something occurred to him that made him glance at Olivier Armstrong with narrowed eyes.

"Would you like to tell me why there just _happens_ to be an expert on all the information on Arcanum aboard your ship? That seems awfully convenient to me."

The corner of Armstrong's mouth quivered, and if he hadn't known that the woman herself was carved from a glacier, he would have thought she was tempted to laugh.

"You usually do your research, Mustang. I'm surprised you didn't know that Kimblee himself was obsessed with the idea of Arcanum long before his imprisonment _."_

His teeth snapped together as he realized she was correct. An avid narcissist and borderline psychopath, Solf Kimblee's ventures into the study of Arcanum centered around weaponizing it. As a myth, it was harmless. In reality, it would be deadly on a massive scale. This only added another dimension to Mustang's resolve to capture the man, figure out how he'd escaped, with _what_ , and with _whom_.

Ignoring Armstrong's jab, Mustang asked Miles:

"You requested this assignment then, because you thought Kimblee and Arcanum were connected somehow?"

Miles nodded, his expression darkening.

"Kimblee is a perfect example of the kind of person who can never possess that power. Although my own life's work has been the study of it, I would rather it never exist than be controlled by someone who lacks moderation, humility, or any basic human decency."

After having been silent for some time, Buccaneer suddenly cleared his throat.

"While we're on the topic, does anyone know what the _hell_ that Envy thing was down there?"

No one had a ready answer. When Mustang first heard from Alphonse exactly what the exchange had been on the surface, he almost hadn't believed the humanoid called Envy could be what Al described. A normal person couldn't have survived a full minute in that planet's environment unprotected, but Al swore by what he had seen. Whatever Envy was, it was still nearly as great a mystery as Arcanum.

"Maybe Ed will be able to tell us a little bit more, once he's able," Hawkeye said softly, and it sent a barb of guilt into Mustang's chest to hear the professionally masked worry in her voice. However, she might have a point. Ed was sometimes quick-tempered and stubborn, but his analytical mind was unmatched, even by his own brother. It was possible that the next strategic decision, the one that could decide the fate of the two starships, was locked in the injured science officer's mind.


	10. First Consultation

When Winry came back to sickbay after a few hours in her quarters, she had her toolbox in one hand and a hard, determined look on her face. If Edward Elric needed a new leg, she would give him one. What's more, it would be the best work she'd ever done. Even if he fought her every step of the way—and she had no doubt he would—she would make sure he had no reason to complain about her craftsmanship.

As the doors to sickbay opened smoothly in front of her, the spark of pride she felt at making him eventually regret his rudeness to her died in her chest. Even from across the room, she could see he was asleep again, more quietly this time. His face, which she had only seen in its annoyed, angry, or agonized states, was now peacefully neutral, and disarmingly young.

Walking over to his cot, Winry tried to reclaim the confidence she'd talked into herself since she was last at his bedside. She had spent years watching Pinako work, and helping with surgeries firsthand. There was no one who knew their way around an android limb better than she did. Paninya's fond nickname—"engineering goddess"—echoed distantly in her consciousness, and Winry clung to it for support.

"Will you need any assistance, Ensign Rockbell?"

Whirling around to face the speaker behind her, Winry recognized the doctor's petite assistant, May Chang. Recovering herself, she answered:

"I don't think so. I just came back to…uh."

 _How am I supposed to say I need to get that sheet off him?_

Winry cursed her sudden embarrassment, but May smiled and finished her sentence for her.

"Of course, you need access to him to get measurements for the prosthetic. You have the doctor's and the captain's full permission to do whatever you need to get Ed his new leg as quickly as possible."

"How did you…" Winry began slowly, trailing off when she looked into May's eyes, which were such a deep black that the pupils were indistinguishable from the irises around them. Realization burst on her that the other girl was a Betazoid. A telepath.

May smiled again, and set a placating hand on Winry's arm as though she knew how uncomfortable this was for her.

"I wouldn't be so rude as to read your thoughts—don't worry. It's a common courtesy to stay out of the heads of your friends and colleagues—although some of us take that responsibility more seriously than others," she finished, her expression souring.

"However, as an empath, it was hard for me to not notice your anxiety. I just wanted to see if I could help in any way."

Winry smiled gratefully. That definitely wasn't as intrusive as dipping directly into her thoughts.

"Thank you. I _do_ need to get accurate measurements, but I was wondering if he's even healed enough for me to do that. I haven't seen the site of the wound yet."

May nodded, and moved around to fold the sheet up around Edward's stump with professional hands. Winry's upbringing in Resembool had steeled her stomach against so many grotesque injuries that she barely flinched at the lurid color of the ragged flesh revealed at the bottom of his thigh. It was obvious that dermal regeneration had been nearly useless on this sort of wound.

"Is this an improvement?" she asked, clinical detachment kicking in as she set her toolbox down next to the cot.

"Yes," confirmed May, lifting the sheet higher on Ed's body to give Winry further access. With a huge concentration of willpower, the engineer steered her eyes away from anything higher than his upper thigh, sternly warning herself that now was _not_ the time to be ogling the sculpted torso just a few inches above. It would be hugely unprofessional, not to mention downright creepy. A glance couldn't hurt, though.

May was still talking, and Winry fixed her eyes on her toolbox, which was far less distracting.

"The doctor and I attempted regeneration on the wound, but that obviously was far from effective. The best we've been able to do is keep it clean, and avoid directly interfering with it. This means it will take far longer to heal than a normal injury would, unfortunately."

It might not be good news for Edward, but Winry couldn't help thinking the prolonged recovery period would give her enough time to build the best damn leg this side of the Neutral Zone. She wiped the emotion from her face as May asked:

"Are you okay from here, then?"

"I think so," she answered, eyeballing the site where the droid port would attach and crouching to reach into her box for a measuring instrument. She wouldn't be able to touch the wound itself, but her instincts and a few accurate assumptions should give her enough to start with.

May walked away to the doctor's desk—mostly, it seemed, to give Winry some space. The engineer appreciated that the doctor's assistant recognized her need for privacy as she began working. It was already enough pressure knowing that Pinako wouldn't be there to guide her through the surgery and attachment process. Winry could build a flawless leg in her sleep—it was putting it on the actual human that made her queasy with nerves. For now, she could hope that her familiarity with the technology and secondhand experience, combined with whatever Doctor Marcoh and May could offer, would be enough to pull Ed through his recovery.

She worked hard for many minutes, measuring, assessing, making educated guesses about the severity of the wound and how much time she should give it before constructing the port. Winry nearly forgot that the droid and the stump it attached to belonged to the only person on the ship whom she had made it her business to avoid. She was running a medical tricorder over the angriest bits of the injury when a low groan popped her bubble of concentration.

Ignoring the beeping instrument in her hand, Winry watched Ed's eyes open wide, his stare wild and unfocused like he'd been pulled from the midst of pitch darkness. Blinking at the intrusion of light, he seemed to recognize his surroundings more quickly than the first time he had woken. Squinting down the length of his body, he frowned when he saw who was sitting next to him.

"You again?"

His voice sounded desert dry and cracked, which really wasn't surprising considering all the yelling he'd done earlier. His bluntness didn't give Winry any extra impulse to be kind to him, although she couldn't help her jolt of sympathy.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, drawing on her reserve of professional detachment.

"I don't think you want to hear the details," he mumbled, chuckling humorlessly. Then his face twisted in a grimace, hands digging into the sheets so hard Winry heard the bones creak. That troublesome twinge of sympathy prodded her again. This was so different than the surgeries back home, where nearly everyone on the operating table was there by choice. Reasoning that there was no need for Ed to be awake, especially if the pain was this bad, she was about to call May back to ask for a painkiller. He seemed to anticipate what she was about to do, and abruptly cut her off with a curt shake of his head. She noticed his hands still didn't release their death grip on the thin sheets. He ground through his teeth:

"No, don't call anyone—I'll be fine. I need to be able to talk. Where's Mustang?"

Pausing uncertainly, Winry remembered the captain's direct order to alert the bridge if Ed woke up. However, Mustang was still in a meeting with Commander Hawkeye and some of the bridge crew of the _Drachman_ , so she was reluctant to summon him to sickbay.

Edward read the conflict on her face, and made a sour look.

"Well, if _he's_ too busy, then at least let me talk to Hughes. It's about the power source that Kimblee and Envy have."

A cold heaviness dropped into Winry's gut, and her stomach clenched in dread. She set the tricorder back down on the small table where the other medical equipment was arranged, surprised at how steady her hands still were.

"I'll call the captain," she responded. She just wanted to run away, and let someone else deliver the bad news.

His eyes widened at her tone, and Winry felt the heaviness pull her slowly towards the floor. She had already given herself away.

"Why can't I talk to Hughes?"

The appeal in his voice stung at the corners of her eyes. Did it have to be _her_ job to tell him?

"Lieutenant Commander Hughes didn't make it back from the away mission. He was buried in space."

It came out of Winry's mouth in a voice that didn't belong to her: cold, clinical, and very forced. She hated how the words sounded, especially when the last thing she wanted to do was cause any more pain.

The shock on Ed's face only lasted for a split second before a door behind his eyes slammed shut.

"I see."

Head falling back against the crisp blue pillow, he directed his eyes up at the bright ceiling—away from her. Winry was shocked at the hot, fast anger that blossomed in her stomach, quickly replacing the cold heaviness. It was astounding to her that he could just lie there like that, knowing both his friend and his leg were gone, and respond with just a simple, "I see." But she wasn't standing in his bathroom waiting to fix a sonic shower this time. This time, he was her patient, and it would be problematic if she were to explode at him.

"So the whole thing about you being a prosthetic limb engineer—that wasn't a joke, was it?" he asked tonelessly, his stare still fixed on the ceiling.

Winry tucked her frustrations into the back of her mind, putting personal animosities aside for the time being.

"It wasn't. Captain Mustang wanted me to measure and fit you for an android prosthetic as soon as possible. That is, if you want to go through with the surgery. The final decision is yours, of course."

 _Not really, though._

Mustang had been adamant, not only that Ed have a new leg, but that he also be up and about as soon as physically possible. Why that was, she still didn't know, but Winry prayed she wouldn't have to draw upon any further powers of persuasion.

Ed's face still had that odd, shuttered look, but his fingers were digging so hard into the sheets that his knuckles were bone white. He was silent for a full minute, and Winry was about to open her mouth again when he slightly tilted his head to shoot her a direct glance from those startlingly golden eyes.

"Go ahead. Make it happen, and fast."

A long pause.

"Please."

His eyes finally broke contact with hers, and she felt like all the air had come back into the room. Trying to sort through the files in her brain, Winry attempted to remember what Pinako always informed their clients before commencing an operation. This was under staggeringly different circumstances, but at the same time there were some things Ed really needed to know. She tried to put the most important parts together for him:

"This isn't something you can rush. The required time for recovery and physical therapy isn't as long as it has been in the past, thanks to significant medical advances, but it's still an enormous commitment. It'll be a while before you can move around under your own power."

His eyebrows furrowed in disapproval at the mention of a time constraint.

"How long, exactly?"

Winry considered. The shortest recovery period had been five weeks, and that had only been a droid foot. An entire leg was a whole different story.

"Three months, at the very least."

His frown deepened.

"One month. That's all it will take for me."

"That's impossible!" she cried out, losing her grip on professionalism in favor of blank astonishment.

"It won't be impossible if I'm the first one to do it," he shot back, sounding exactly like an arrogant teenager trying to prove how much better he was than everyone else.

"There's a reason it takes so long, you know," she contended, frustrated that he didn't seem to be listening to her.

"If you try and rush the process, you'll just end up exacerbating the injury, and then it will take _twice_ as long."

"But you're going to help me, right?"

Winry caught her jaw right before it dropped. The arrogance was gone, as suddenly as it had arrived, replaced with nothing but sincerity. He continued when it became obvious that she wasn't capable of answering him.

"That's why you're here, isn't it? You wouldn't be around if you didn't think I could do it."

Right then, it hit Winry exactly what kind of a fight she had ahead of her. Edward Elric was going to get back on his feet in one month, or run himself into the ground trying. At this point, she'd be lucky if she could keep up with him.

"Are you sure?"

With an expression like that on his face, she felt ridiculous even asking. It would have been impossible for anyone to talk him out of the decision.

"I don't really have a choice."

Sighing, she finally reached back for the medical tricorder. _And now, neither do I._

* * *

From his angle, lying down on the sickbay cot, Ed couldn't see where his left leg ended. At the moment, he didn't particularly want to find out what the stump looked like, especially when most of his nerves were convinced it was still there, and making it their mission to scream that fact until it was hard to think about anything else.

Instead, his gaze naturally fell on the engineer, who hadn't spoken a word since returning to her task. He didn't realize he was staring until it was far too late to act innocent, but fortunately she was engrossed. Her level of commitment might only have been broken by a red alert—and he wasn't sure even that would be enough. The uncertainty, confusion, and eventual annoyance he'd seen on her face had now been replaced by utter concentration, her eyebrows pinched upward and together over her focused eyes as she tapped notes into a PADD.

For reasons that he didn't feel comfortable admitting, watching Winry helped Ed take his mind off most of the aches. It even distracted him, ever so slightly, from the terrible news she'd been forced to deliver. It wasn't real to him that while he'd been slipping in between worlds, lost in an atmosphere of confusion and pain, one of his friends had slipped away entirely. He could tell that his reaction wasn't what she had expected, but he simply didn't have the resources to deal with it properly at the moment.

More imminent was the connection between Kimblee, Envy, and the enigmatic stones that were sitting in the lab. Ed had no idea what he was going to tell Mustang—mostly because _hey, there's no concrete evidence aside from my probably drug-induced dreamscape, but I'm pretty sure those rocks are part of Kimblee's evil genius plan,_ didn't quite seem to cut it. Even as he thought about it, the clarity of what he had seen began to rapidly slip away. The sharpness of Kimblee and Envy's features in the dim light, along with the pulsating glow of the red rocks, was dissolving as quickly as the hundreds of voices that had pounded on the inside of his skull. Ed couldn't help but be relieved at their disappearance.

Half an hour of silent toil apparently gave Winry all the information she needed. After she set her materials down, Ed watched her give a small, private nod of satisfaction. A little miffed, he cleared his throat to let her know he was still there. It was _his_ leg, after all. She looked back at him, like she had just remembered she wasn't alone.

"I should be able to make a prototype with everything I know now," she said, sounding way too happy about it.

"And what about me? Don't _I_ get to know anything?"

Her lips twitched, and Ed realized too late just how juvenile he sounded.

"Do you want me to send this to you?" she wiggled the PADD in front of his eyes, and Ed had to admit that her notes were unintelligible, even to his scientific brain.

"No! It's just…can you let me know what your progress is, once in a while?"

Winry's expression softened. He would have been tempted to sucker punch anyone else who looked at him with that degree of sympathy, but for some reason it didn't really bother him when it was her.

"Of course I will."

She looked like she was about to say something else, when a new set of footsteps began approaching. Instead of speaking, she looked up to see who it was. Ed turned his head incrementally to the side, and saw the doctor's assistant coming towards them. He couldn't explain his surge of irritation at May's appearance, chalking it up to the fact that any relative of Ling Yao was bound to be annoying in some capacity. He told himself it definitely _wasn't_ because her arrival meant he and Winry were no longer in a private conversation.

"The captain just got out of his meeting, and asked me if anything has changed here," May told them both, at once noticing that Ed was conscious again. She picked up another medical tricorder and calmly began checking his vitals, determinedly ignoring the discontented grumble he made in the back of his throat.

"I informed him that you were awake, but that Ensign Rockbell has been busy taking measurements. He said he's prepared to come down here whenever you're finished, Winry."

She nodded at the engineer, who, to Ed's unaccountable displeasure, immediately began packing things back into her box.

"You can tell him that I just finished."

Ed began mentally steeling himself for Mustang's visit, which was sure to be far more unpleasant, if slightly less awkward, than Winry's. May nodded in acknowledgment, and walked away to deliver the message. His dissatisfaction increased exponentially as Winry picked up the toolbox and scooted the sheet back over him without saying anything more.

"Don't forget?" he blurted out, just as she was about to walk away. She turned back to him, eyes wide with surprise, and a moment later that soft look came back to her face.

"I won't. I promise."

The fingers of her right hand twitched in the direction of where his lay on the sheet, but instead of reaching out, she awkwardly pulled at her uniform and glanced away. An uncomfortable beat passed before she made a funny coughing sound and squared her shoulders.

"I'll let you know as soon as the prototype is ready, Lieutenant Elric," she said stiffly. Then she turned on her heel and was out the door before Ed could think of anything else to say. Across the room to his right, he saw that May Chang had watched everything with eyes that caught every suspicious detail—no doubt in order to report to his brother. Internally, Ed groaned. If he got through this conversation with Mustang, Alphonse would be next, and he'd be asking even more difficult questions.


	11. Unexpected Visitors

Only Edward Elric could sit in a sickbay cot, eating replicated jello, and call Roy Mustang an idiot to his face.

Standing at the end of Ed's cot, with Hawkeye close at his elbow, Mustang tried to remind himself that Ed had only just recovered enough to be able to hold a conversation. Still, it irked him that somehow, within the span of a five-minute conversation, the two of them had already managed to wind themselves into tight knots of aggravation. His second-in-command set a placating hand on his elbow, and he could nearly hear her telling him to count, _slowly_ , to ten, and back down again. _One…two…_

"Sir, he didn't actually say you were an _idiot_ ," she pointed out, ignoring the implications of Ed's terminology. There were only so many translations of the Romulan insult, and although none of them translated directly to "idiot," they were also far from complimentary.

Ed blinked. "I didn't? I meant to."

 _Six…seven…_

Hawkeye's narrowed gaze shifted back to Ed, and he subsided. At last reaching ten, Mustang trusted himself to speak.

"Edward, just because _you_ believe Arcanum doesn't exist—that it is, to quote your eloquent phrasing, 'the mutant spawn of fairy tails, religion, and a room full of washed-up chemists high off their own fumes'—doesn't negate the fact that Kimblee is in possession of something very important. Something that _we_ don't understand. And whatever it is nearly tore us into pieces above that planet."

Ed glared at Mustang, then down into his cup of jello. When he spoke again, it was into the cup.

"…All right. Aside from that, why are we still hanging in space, barely a lightyear from where Kimblee is? Staying anywhere near this system makes it almost _too_ easy for him to finish the job."

Hawkeye had her answer ready, making Mustang's job of standing silently and looking impassive much, much easier.

"We've decided that right now, he isn't an imminent threat. For the moment…Ed, we need _you_."

Ed stopped poking his jello, and stared back at her uncomprehendingly.

"Huh?"

"Ling has been continuing your study of the Arca—" Ed's eyes narrowed, and she rephrased, "—the…sample, ever since the away team came back. He hasn't been able to get anything more out of it than you were."

Shooting Mustang a glare, Ed said gratingly:

"Well _that's_ certainly interesting. Last I heard, the sample was about to be destroyed. I guess knowing Kimblee has a big, scary gun changed a few minds, didn't it?"

"Edward, that's not—"

Mustang tapped Hawkeye's elbow, and she cut off her reprimand. The negative space beneath the sterile sheet where Ed's leg should be testified to where his bitterness came from. Mustang reasoned that if anyone were going to have to bear the brunt of Ed's resentment, it might as well be him.

"It's not just whatever Kimblee's weapon is. There was also that other thing on the planet. Your brother and Ensign Catalina described something calling itself, 'Envy'."

Ed's eyes flickered down to his knee, then back up again. It was nearly imperceptible, but Mustang caught it, and thought suddenly of Hughes. When Ed spoke again, it was after too long of a hesitation.

"Yeah, I really can't help you with that one. Sorry."

"Could it be some different humanoid species the Federation hasn't made contact with yet?" Hawkeye mused, and Ed and Mustang shook their heads in unison.

"There would be some record of it, especially if it's native to the Alpha Quadrant," Mustang pointed out. "We may not have every system memorized, but a planet of creatures like that would certainly have become warp-capable by now. Evidence of their existence would be strewn across the sector."

"A non-native species then? Some nearby wormhole—" Hawkeye broke off suddenly when Ed started shaking his head more fervently, wrinkles of concentration gathering between his eyebrows.

"It wasn't _right_. It didn't seem…alive. Not in the same way _we're_ alive." He gestured at the three of them. "The way it looked, and spoke, and even how it moved—there was just some fundamental wrongness about it. I can't describe it," he ended lamely, discouragement trickling out of his words like sand.

"We'll come back to it later," Hawkeye said. "You must focus on recovering."

Mustang noticed that she had moved away from him, around to the right side of Ed's hospital bed. Somehow, in the time it had taken her to migrate from the captain's side to her current position next to Edward, the sheets had been smoothed, the already clean shelf next to the cot had been organized, and the glaring white light had been dimmed to a more comfortable setting.

Ed did seem drained, even just from the short conversation that had taken place. But when Mustang gestured to Hawkeye for them to leave sickbay, he spoke again:

"Wait—one thing."

Both officers turned back. Ed was tapping a distracted rhythm on the top of the sheet with one hand. Now that he had already spoken up, it looked like he wanted more than anything to just stay silent. Finally, he managed to choke out:

"Thanks…for sending me that engineer. With the leg she's making me, I'll be walking again in one month."

Hawkeye's eyebrows climbed so far toward her hairline they practically vanished. Mustang repeated numbly, "A _month_?"

Ed nodded, barely moving his chin.

The two left sickbay after that, leaving Ed staring fixedly into his jello cup as though its contents contained some very important discovery. The words "one month" droned fuzzily in Mustang's brain like a badly tuned radio. Rockbell was one of the most talented engineers on the ship, but…a _month_?

A side-glance told him that Hawkeye was—inexplicably, irritatingly—smiling.

"That engineer is either crazy, or…yeah. She's crazy," he stated, giving Hawkeye time to agree with him. Instead, she made a nondescript noise in the back of her throat. His glance to her said, " _go ahead, tell me what I'm missing_ this _time."_

"Without Winry Rockbell's quick thinking, we would have lost the entire away team. Compared to that assignment, it's logical to assume she can handle Edward."

Mustang grunted, inelegantly acknowledging her point. Still…hijacking a comm frequency for a transporter lock was one thing. Designing and building a leg, then rehabilitating an officer who wasn't exactly known for his sugary sweet disposition— _that_ was on another plane of difficulty entirely. Hawkeye seemed to read his mind.

"Worrying about Ed isn't going to help right now. He can take care of himself—we both know that. The most important thing for us to do is to come up with a course of action quickly, before Kimblee and whoever's assisting him can escape or cause any more damage."

"Right," said Mustang, shaking off his preoccupation. "And the _Drachman_?"

"On a course for Earth."

Mustang nodded, pleased that Armstrong still seemed to be on board with his plan on how to inform the Federation bigwigs about Kimblee. The _Drachman_ had left the system several hours beforehand to apprise Starfleet Command on the outcome of the mission. The sudden appearance of "Envy"—whatever or whoever it was—had changed things, and both Armstrong and Mustang reasoned that the best way to deliver a proper briefing was in person, at Command.

"Someone has to give them the details and be able to answer all their questions. There's also a lot of paperwork, I'd imagine. Shouldn't you be the one to do the honors?" Armstrong had asked Mustang before leaving with her ship. "After all, _I'm_ not the one chasing the top post."

"Is it really doing the honors if we all we did was fail miserably?"

"I assume I don't have to tell you why that view of things is short-sighted, Mustang."

She didn't. Whoever made it back first to Federation Headquarters got to deliver the news about Arcanum, as well as the indestructible creature known as Envy. That person would likely spend a lot of time with Starfleet's top-ranking admirals, and Commander-in-Chief Bradley himself.

But Mustang didn't see his path that way. Instead, he saw the _Amestris_ bringing Kimblee back to a prison cell in chains, along with his mysterious power source and his even more mysterious ally.

"Consider it a generous gesture, Olivier."

Armstrong's expression said: " _Addressing me by my first name is a fast way to get your nose broken_." Her mouth said: "Don't expect a gift basket."

The _Drachman_ departed less than an hour later, leaving the _Amestris_ near enough to the planet to still keep tabs on the shuttle. Since the vessel hadn't moved an inch from the surface of the Class N planet, it was apparent Kimblee felt confident neither of the Starfleet ships would be sending any more offense down to the surface. Despite this fact, the _Amestris'_ helmsman had a standing directive to take the ship to warp at the first sign of another energy surge from the surface.

So far, however, there had been no anomalous readings. Just silence. It was, Mustang thought, rather eerie that after the powerful display on the surface, everything had simply had shut down. It was as though the inhabitants of the shuttle were playing dead.

In the meantime, Lieutenant Miles had been left behind on the _Amestris_ to examine the sample that could be the legendary Arcanum. Once Ling Yao had showed him the disappointing results of Ed's experimentation, Miles had settled himself down to perform more academic research.

"I don't think anyone wants me messing things up in your nice laboratory," Miles told Mustang on his way out the door. "So I'll stick to the computer files. It's been a while since I looked at the records of the _Ishvala_ 's disappearance, so maybe time and focus will reveal answers there."

"Whatever you need," Mustang had replied, and set him up at his own station with full access to the research database.

As Mustang and Hawkeye now made their way back to the bridge, he was about to let Alphonse know that Ed was awake, but very tired. Before he could do so, his comm chirped at him.

 _"Captain, I'm sorry to interrupt, but can you and Commander Hawkeye come up to the bridge?"_

"Zhanshi. I'm on my way. What is it?"

 _"There's a ship approaching. According to its warp signature it seems to be a Bajoran scout ship. They haven't hailed us."_

Mustang glanced at Hawkeye in surprise before answering:

"Thank you. We'll be there immediately."

He cut the line, commenting, "That's an extremely long trip for a scouting vessel to make."

Hawkeye nodded, and her pace quickened as the two of them approached the bridge entrance and passed through. Lieutenant Zhanshi stood, and Mustang noticed that his hastily appointed security officer seemed to shoot up from the captain's chair as though it had burned her. She apparently didn't approve of being in command. He'd have to think about that—and how it would affect the possibility of her promotion—later.

While Hawkeye sent the relieved Lan Fan back to her post, Maria Ross showed Mustang the specs on the approaching scout ship at the ops station.

"The vessel popped out from behind a proto-nebula just a few lightyears away, which is why our long-range sensors didn't pick it up."

Mustang frowned. If the ship had been hiding, that suggested its pilot was already expecting to encounter ships near the planet. Although, if it was only a scouting vessel…

"They're—they're arming phaser banks!"

Ross' voice cracked upward in surprise as her displays started blinking red.

"Raise shields…?" Mustang said, although it seemed like a lot of effort for such a distant shot. The scout was too far out of range. By the time its phaser fire reached them, it made more sense for the _Amestris_ to just lower shields again and not waste the energy. The scout ship's shot dissipated a hundred meters short of the _Amestris'_ hull, fizzling out pathetically on the view screen. Mustang and Ross looked at each other, nonplussed.

"Hail them. I'd like to know why we just got spit on by an allied scout while we're in the middle of a mission."

Ross obliged, opening a frequency to the unknown ship.

"This is Captain Roy Mustang of the _Amestris_. Are we in your way?" Hawkeye shook her head at him, and Mustang ignored her.

There was a great deal of static over the line, and nothing more than a few wavering lines showed up on the viewscreen. The transmission cut to audio only. There was a sound resembling a child's shriek, and then, finally, a voice spoke.

 _"Captain Mustang. Solf Kimblee is no longer your concern. Leave orbit and let us bring him to justice."_

The voice was deep, and had the same faint accent that belonged to Lieutenant Miles.

"Please identify yourself, scouting vessel."

 _"Our identities are not important."_

"That may be true. However, the fact that you just fired on us _is_."

 _"A mistake. The one responsible for that shot is no longer in control of the weapons array."_

This caught Mustang by surprise.

"There's more than one of you in a one-man scout vessel?"

 _"Again, not of your concern. Leave this system, forget Kimblee, and we will undertake his capture."_

Mustang saw the readings on Ross' console from her tactical scans of the scout ship. They had limited phasers, and no room for torpedoes. In terms of defense, Mustang could see that their shields were almost completely drained—certainly not strong enough to withstand one of Kimblee's shockwaves.

"You may not fully understand what you're getting into. The shuttle on the surface is prepared to put up a fight."

 _"You will not persuade us to leave."_

There was another noise—someone's squeak and a frantic whisper, and the unknown man growled something that sounded like: _"Keep out of this, fool."_

Mustang changed his approach.

"Your ship is in no condition to even orbit that planet, let alone stage an assault. Come aboard the _Amestris_ and we'll talk. We can help you repair your shields and your malfunctioning communication system."

 _"We do not need your assistance."_

More whispering. Another growl. Mustang rubbed his temples in exasperation.

"Listen. You can either come aboard and accept our help, or you can get shot to hell by Kimblee. Who, by the way, fought off two heavily armed Federation ships a few days ago with nothing more than dumb luck—oh, and enough firepower to collapse a planet."

"Sir!"

 _Sorry Hawkeye. It's been a long day._

There was, at last, a pause of deliberation from the scout ship.

 _"We'll consider it."_

"Good to hear."

The other ship ended the transmission abruptly, and at the other end of the bridge Hawkeye began to coordinate the process of bringing the Bajoran vessel into the largest shuttle bay alongside the _Black Hayate_. Mustang looked forward to seeing who their unexpected guests were, and what they could possibly want with Kimblee.

* * *

"Can we get to the part where you explain why _I'm_ here?"

Alphonse was in the crossfire between the two siblings, and currently wishing he could be anywhere else. May stood with one foot inside the doorway to the science lab, obviously reluctant to completely enter the room, while Ling Yao kept fiddling with the repaired force field settings that kept the particulates sealed off from the rest of the laboratory space. Blithely ignoring May's question, Ling pressed a final button with a flourish. H turned to face both Alphonse and May with a wide grin on his face, and one finger poised over the console's control pad.

"Thanks for joining me, both of you."

Neither Al nor May could make a sound before Ling calmly pressed the button to deactivate the field, and the little rocks clattered gently to the lab table surface. Alphonse took a step forward in alarm.

"Ling! What in the—you can't just have those out in the open like that!"

However, Ling's face had gone immediately tense. At the same time, Al heard May gasp from the doorway. He turned back to look at her.

"What did you do?" she whispered. Her fingers, so often steady as steel, shook slightly as she lifted her right hand up to her forehead. Her eyes squeezed shut, as though she were listening very intently for a distant voice, and still couldn't quite hear the words.

Al was perturbed at once. "May—?"

"Ah, so it's not just me." Ling zapped the force field up again, enclosing the particulates.

"It's coming from those?" May tilted her head toward where the innocent-looking sample lay inside the field's gently whirring invisible bubble. She still looked a little shaken, and Al was more than ready to find out what was going on.

"What are you two talking about? Nothing happened—except for the force field coming down, of course." He glared at Ling. "A _little_ warning before you pull something like that again, please."

"So it seems that only telepaths can sense it, as far as I can tell," Ling spoke, as if to himself. "Which leads to the next couple puzzles: why it can be blocked off by a force field—"

"Why _what_ can be blocked off?!"

"—and, of course, why these particulates seem to be its source."

Before his annoyance grew any more, Al noticed that May had walked farther into the lab and was staring over at the console. Her eyes, just like with all Betazoids, were the color of liquid onyx, but now they seemed to be so dark that they were almost non-reflective.

"It was a resonance."

Al squinted down at her.

"And that is…?"

"It's like the footprint of a living consciousness. Or—maybe more accurately, an _echo_ of it. A resonance is quite common after a death. Family members and friends amplify the 'echo' through their feelings and memories toward the deceased, and then as more time passes, it fades gradually. I've felt resonances before. I was just…surprised this time."

Ling nodded along with May's explanation as he continued adjusting the settings on the console.

"A resonance is not something you typically feel unless you're surrounded by other telepaths," he said, facing away from the two of them. "Honestly, I don't know of any other places where they're felt apart from Betazed."

Al finally stopped feeling like he was so far out of the loop. Then, something occurred to him:

"Well—the ship _did_ just experience a loss: Hughes. Whatever this 'resonance' thing is isn't connected to him, is it?"

Ling shook his head. "I really don't think so. Lan Fan, May, and myself are the only telepaths aboard the _Amestris_. The resonance we detected, though shallow, is more than could be generated by at least ten others like us. It's highly peculiar, and it seems to be connected strongly to _these_." He quirked his thumb toward the particulates.

May crossed her arms, forehead creasing. "If all you wanted was to determine whether another telepath could feel the resonance, you could have asked Lan Fan. I don't feel comfortable leaving Edward alone in sickbay for so long."

Al started. "Wait—Winry's already seen him? The captain and Hawkeye too?"

May nodded. "I was about to tell you before we were given an 'executive summons' to the science lab." She sighed, turning back toward the exit door.

"I'll let you figure out what's going on with your little rocks, Ling. Alphonse and I need to get back to sickbay and—"

"Hang on." Ling's voice cut her off. "I didn't ask Lan Fan because I needed you here specifically. You too, Elric."

May turned around, her face covered in consternation.

"Why us?"

Ling grinned again, and his hand on the console dropped the force field a second time.

"Because you both have medical experience. I need you here in case I die."

Al watched, speechless, as Ling reached for one of the particulates and closed his fingers around it.

May gave a small shriek, and Al took a futile step forward, even though he knew there was no way he was close enough to stop Ling from touching the sample with his bare skin.

Promptly, a great deal of nothing happened.

"Huh." Ling spun the rock between his thumb and pointer finger, holding it up to his eye as if it were a monocle. "I thought that would be a bit more dramatic."

"You complete _idiot!_ " Al cringed away from May as the small medic positively inflated with fury. "Put it down! NOW!"

"What? I'm not hurting it."

"That's not the—are you really that stupid?!"

"Hey! I'm not—"

"What could have happened if you triggered some sort of reaction? Did you even think about what might happen to Al, or me, or the _ship?!"_

Ling held the stone away from his face to glare daggers at his sister, but Al's eyes were riveted to the hand that held the stone. And then he saw it: a lick of ruby slid across Ling's palm, amplified by the bright laboratory lights. It stayed, shimmering, across the surface of the tiny rock.

"Ling, look." He pointed to where the stone was now pulsing, releasing a slow, living red light. A tiny heartbeat.

As soon as he saw where Al was looking, Ling immediately set the stone in his hand down next to the other particulates. Once it rested among its fellows again, the glow faded, leaving a normal, tiny gray rock. Taking out his tricorder, Al walked closer, running the device over the particulates from every angle as Ling kept staring down at his own hand.

"Very peculiar," he muttered, and Alphonse was inclined to agree. The tricorder readings provided no insight as to why the sample's appearance had suddenly altered.

"The resonance hasn't changed," May noted, her anger at Ling set aside for the moment as she held both pointer fingers to her temples. "Whatever you did just now didn't have any more effect on _that_ , at least. And I really do need to get back to sickbay now."

"Fine with me."

"And please leave me _out_ of your next insane experiment."

The siblings' shallow bickering faded in Al's awareness as he kept scanning the strange sample. He began to wonder: why had the captain done such an about-face? He had at first insisted that the sample be vaporized, but shortly after the failed mission to capture Kimblee, Mustang had instead ordered Ling to resume the close study of it in Ed's place.

At once, more than ever, Al wished Ed were standing here instead of him, and that he were in a healthier state. He felt the strong impulse to check on his brother and make sure he was recovering properly. Rarely had the two of them gone a day without seeing each other, but Ed's condition had been so touch-and-go that, until May told him otherwise, only she, the doctor, and Winry had been allowed anywhere near him. And Al was, sadly, too familiar with this situation.

Though he and his brother were closely matched intellectually, Ed had always been the one to devise ingenious, sometimes foolhardy methods of finding out what he wanted to know. His tendency to rush to the most daring experiments made him a wild card in the Federation, but also one of their most unique and useful assets. It also meant he got hurt. A lot.

Only the Elric brothers themselves knew how much Ed's abilities had really cost them. Not even Mustang or Hawkeye were fully aware of what the two boys had experienced before they became part of the _Amestris'_ crew. Alphonse was ready to leave that part of their lives behind, but he knew that as long as Edward breathed, he would be a magnet for disaster. This time, it was because he had tried to protect Al, and it had backfired horribly, irreversibly.

"Let's go check on him," said May's voice suddenly, close to his shoulder.

Al broke free from his thoughts, and managed to smile down at her.

"Yeah."

* * *

After the captain and Hawkeye took their leave, Ed sat on the sickbay cot with nothing but the beeps of various machines and the room's pervasive, flooding brilliance for company. He was left to ponder why he hadn't told his commanding officers about what he'd seen inside his head.

Well, there was the fact that it was _inside_ _his_ _head._ The premonition, the drug-addled vision, might be something in which a philosopher or an artist might be able to find a shred of validity, but Ed, the scientist, simply could not. Even as he thought about it, the colors of the shuttle's interior, and the skeletal sharpness of the faces in the darkness, began to ripple into indistinction in his memory. And then there was:

" _Arcanum,"_ he scoffed out loud, before remembering that either Marcoh or May Chang—probably both—were hanging around somewhere nearby. Still, that stupid myth had caused more problems than it could ever fix. He and Alphonse knew that firsthand.

No sooner had Al's name occurred to him than Ed realized that his brother should be here. He hadn't seen him since regaining consciousness, and Ed needed someone trustworthy to keep tabs on Ling, who was probably busy trying to blow up the science lab by now.

"Hey," he said, his tone slightly raised. He couldn't see the doctor's cubicle from his cot, but _someone_ had to be there.

"Hey!"

The silence pounded back into his ears, and Ed slumped against the cot. The exhaustion from his short conversation with Mustang and Hawkeye sank even deeper, like it was some black creature trying to bury itself inside his bones. They wouldn't really just leave him alone, would they? Not for long, at least. Someone would come back any minute. He noticed suddenly that there was a very faint ringing in his ears, crawling upward in volume and pitch. He recognized it. It was the same ringing he heard after the first explosion. The first time he heard that cold, crazy laughter and the first time Hughes' voice sounded truly afraid. The ringing got so loud he brought his hands up to press on either side of his head, pushing inward on his temples until his knuckles ached, and that's when he noticed his comm badge, sitting, grimy and dust-colored on the clean silver table. It took him several long seconds to reach out a hand for it, and something clattered to the floor when he finally got the device between his shaking fingers. He must have pressed it, because there was a voice on the other end, blurry and faint through the ringing:

 _"Hello?"_

It wasn't Alphonse, and Ed was surprised, because he thought he'd said his brother's name before hailing. As it was, without a clear directive, the comm had connected him with the last person who had used it to reach him, back when he had been down on the unnamed planet.

The person he had just hailed was very confused, but continued to speak into the empty comm line.

 _"…Rockbell. Hello?!"_

"…Winry?" His mouth moved slowly; he was underwater.

 _"Who…? Wait—is this—"_

The rest of her response got lost, bouncing around somewhere between his ears. Still gripping the comm badge, he was vaguely aware that there was still noise coming from it, but it didn't really matter. The ringing couldn't get any louder, and the boulder was being lowered back on to his lungs.


End file.
